Anne Geggis
The most optimistic polls for the Democrats show Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis winning by 3 points if he faces Charlie Crist and by 7 points if he faces Nikki Fried. And it could be as bad for the Democrats as an 11-point win for the incumbent Governor, according to one survey.
Even more, Democratic strongholds like Miami-Dade County have voter rolls that show Democrats’ dominance is diminishing while the number of registered Republicans and those with no party affiliation keeps growing.
And, more concretely than polls and registration numbers, the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) pulled in almost five times as much money in the second quarter as the Florida Democratic Party (FDP), giving the GOP a significant edge as the parties head into the General Election season following Tuesday’s Primary.
The conventional wisdom is not whether the Democrats are going to lose, but just how humiliating the losses are going to be.
Still, Andrea Mercado, Executive Director of Florida Rising, a Tampa-based statewide voting rights and grassroots organization, sees reasons to be optimistic about the Democrats’ chances of retaking the Governor’s Mansion, no matter what the outcome of today’s Primary.
And it’s not just because the prediction market Monday showed the Governor trending downward (although still with a much better chance of winning) and Crist trending upward.
Even though President Joe Biden’s path to victory did not include Florida in 2020, and President Donald Trump won the state in the 2016 election as well, Mercado said she believes the state of Florida still has the same electorate that put DeSantis in the Governor’s Mansion by just 32,463 votes out of 8.2 million votes cast.
“We know that Florida is winnable,” she said, calling Florida “the biggest battleground state in the country.”
“Our elections, time and time again, come down to 1%, or 30,000 votes in a state of 23 million people,” she said. ”I really do believe that DeSantis has been overreaching and advocating a much more extremist politics many people in Florida would disagree with.”
There were still signs of optimism for Democrats, even in 2020, she argues.
Democrats flipped Duval County for the first time since President Jimmy Carter, Seminole County went blue for the first time since 1948. Never mind that Volusia County turned from blue to red starting in 2012.
“Democrats have an uplifting narrative to tell in Florida,” Mercado said. “Counties we have flipped red to blue have passed protections for renters to make Florida more affordable, increased protections against evictions and decreased corporate landlords’ ability to price-gouge with rent increases.”
Instead of focusing on kitchen-table issues like skyrocketing rent, DeSantis has been attacking “every group in the state,” Mercado argued. For the LGBTQ population, it’s his Parental Education Rights Law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics. For Black residents, DeSantis decreased the number of Black congressional districts. For women, DeSantis made abortion harder to obtain. And for everyone who needs a roof over their head, Mercado said DeSantis refused to do enough to address why insurance companies are leaving the state or why housing costs are becoming unaffordable.
“There’s a fatigue with the extremists — the type of extremist policies that DeSantis propagates,” Mercado argued.
Her organization’s push for the next 12 weeks until the November election will not involve convincing Republicans to flip, she said.
“I think this race is still up in the air,” she predicted. “The biggest persuasion that we need to do is not to switch someone from red to blue, but to convince them to go out and vote at all.”
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Gray Rohrer of Florida Politics contributed to this report.
13 comments
L.E. "Red" Phant
August 23, 2022 at 5:11 am
How many different ways are there to say “We’ll win if we get out the base”? That’s all this is. For the first time, however, the Democrat base is smaller than the Republican base. Why is the Republican base growing? Because people are moving here from elsewhere. They’re not moving here because they live Crist or Fried, of that you can sure. Yes, migration from state to state is telling the tale. Florida’s natural growth rate is negative. But it is all the folks coming here from blue northern states that is building the Republican base and signalling a good ten more years of Republican dominance, at least.
Impeach Biden
August 23, 2022 at 6:44 am
^ False information… Republican Party is being infiltrated by the far left. Many register Republican but not really Republican..only doing so to create illusion and vote in key far left infiltrators. It’s all over folks…all over.
Impeach Biden
August 23, 2022 at 7:48 am
Looks like the Corsin / Offen band of misfits has taken my stage name.
Joe Corsin
August 23, 2022 at 8:38 am
Fat Cammack is coming. Will undress and sit on your face. Gargantuan scrub…
Popcorn
August 23, 2022 at 8:17 pm
No it’s the idea of moving the dick wads that are oh so educated to the droughts. And destruction.and watch them be reseilant.
Impeach Biden
August 23, 2022 at 8:15 am
Anne Geggis worked for the Sun-Sentinel paper. That rag has a history of publishing bogus polling numbers that favor Democrat candidates. They were wrong in 2018 with the Governor’s election. They were wrong in 2016 with the Presidential election. They were wrong in 2020 saying Biden would win Florida.
Joe Corsin
August 23, 2022 at 8:42 am
Well the important thing is that Trump is now up to his armpits in dung… potentially facing the death penalty for a mountain of crimes including espionage act violations. What you got to say about that? Fake news? Witch hunt? But Hunter’s laptop?😆
Impeach Biden
August 23, 2022 at 8:50 am
Kind of early to be hitting the bong Corsin / Offen unless you are at Club Revolution smoking some of that Nikki Fried Ganja.
Joe Corsin
August 23, 2022 at 11:35 am
Yeah you gonna be smoking some of that Nikki Fried anchovy when dangerous far right Florida GOP finally implodes. Yeah gonna get a mouth full of hair…
International spot
August 23, 2022 at 9:33 am
When they learn extrimest those are the ones posting your records on the internet trying to communicate with due diligence
John Doe
August 23, 2022 at 11:17 am
DeSantis won by such a small margin against the blackcommiequEEr because he was an unknown at the time. Few dared to dream that he would become the great leader he has proven to be. Polls back then ACCURATELY predicted that the race would be a toss up, just like they now show that DeSantis will crush either Democrat lamb sent to the slaughter.
Elliott Offen
August 23, 2022 at 11:37 am
^ Neo nazi nut job. Screen shot taken and sent to FBI as possible terrorist threat.
martin
August 23, 2022 at 11:41 am
The florida dem party is the “flat earth society”.
Comments are closed.