1 million more: Growing Florida GOP tops Democratic voters in political milestone

A sign advertises voter registration. (Peter Rimar via Wikimedia Commons)

The number of registered Republican voters in Florida officially surpassed Democrats by more than 1 million on Sunday, a milestone reflecting political shifts in the Sunshine State and the largest margin for the GOP since the late 1980s.

The newest figures – based on up-to-date numbers from county election supervisors – showed 5.33 million active Republican voters, compared to 4.33 million Democrats – a difference of 1,000,024 voters early Sunday. That means Republicans make up nearly 37% of Florida’s voters, compared to about 29% for Democrats.

A significant number of voters in Florida, 3.92 million, or just over 34%, are affiliated with no political party or the minor parties.

These are among the factors that drove Republican gains, or held back Democrats, according to interviews with experts and voters:

– Shifting political views across Florida, once considered a battleground swing state, where Republicans now control the governor’s office, both houses in the Legislature, both U.S. Senate offices and 18 of 30 congressional seats. This is notable among Hispanic voters, especially in South Florida, who have newly embraced conservative themes and championed the GOP’s descriptions of Democrats as socialists.

– A Republican-backed law, which took effect last year, cracking down on outside voter registration organizations, which historically enrolled Black, Hispanic and college-age voters. These are groups that traditionally skew Democratic. The law imposes expensive fines up to $250,000 on groups that miss tight new deadlines or employ felons or non-citizens to help register voters. Most such third-party organizations have effectively shut down their operations in Florida.

– Florida is becoming a destination for conservatives moving from elsewhere in the United States. The state’s population has passed 23 million for the first time, adding roughly 600,000 people who move to Florida every year for the past decade, according to the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

– Progressives, especially LGBTQ families, many moved out of Florida over GOP-backed laws and policies that made them uneasy, or residents who struggled with rising housing and insurance costs. About 450,000 each year move out of Florida, according to the chamber’s figures.

– Florida is a closed primary state, meaning a voter can’t cast a ballot in a Republican or Democratic primary unless the voter is registered in that party: Some voters change party affiliation strategically – which is allowed – to vote for or against candidates they otherwise couldn’t. The state’s Democrats canceled Florida’s presidential primary in March.

Gregory Wareham, 20, of Lake City, a finance senior at the University of Florida, switched earlier this year from the Democratic Party to the GOP because he said his values shifted after spending time in conservative circles.

“I decided to switch over because when I initially registered to vote out of high school, I held values that aligned more with the Democratic Party,” Wareham said.

Southern states like Florida were becoming more conservative, said Lonna Atkeson, a political scientist and director of the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University.

“[People] don’t want to live in California anymore, or maybe they don’t want to live in Florida anymore, so those people who don’t want to live here are moving out,” Atkeson said. People moving into the state align themselves with more conservative views and people moving out tend to have more liberal views, Atkeson said.

Since the last presidential election – when Donald Trump won in Florida 51-48 percent four years ago – Republicans have now become the dominant political party in eight more of the state’s 67 counties, such as Pinellas County, which includes the cities of St. Petersburg and Clearwater, and St. Lucie County along the state’s East Coast north of West Palm Beach. 

That means Republicans now make up majorities in 57 of 67 counties.

The other GOP-flipped counties since 2020 are in the Panhandle and across northern Florida, which is now redder than ever: Calhoun, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Liberty and Madison counties.

“If you look at what the Democrats are trying to sell people, they are not interested in it,” Evan Power, the chairman of the Republican Party in Florida, said in an interview during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “They’ve become radicalized, they move far to the left and people do not want to be a part of a radical left agenda.”

Democrats were the majority party among voters in 18 counties during the last presidential election but now only in 10. Even in those 10 counties, Republicans showed gains among voters in eight since January. Democrats since January lost voters in all but one of those same counties, tiny Gadsden County west of Tallahassee and the state’s only county with more Black than white residents.

Democrats still hold comfortable margins in some of Florida’s biggest, urban counties: 

– Miami-Dade, home to the state’s largest block of nearly 1.5 million voters, where Democrats make up about 35% of voters and Republicans make up 31%.

– Broward, one of Florida’s bluest counties, where Democrats hold a commanding over 45% of more than 1.1 million voters compared to Republicans with 23%.

– Palm Beach, home to Trump, where Democrats make up over 37% of more than 866,000 voters and Republicans have 32%.

– Orange and neighboring Osceola, where Republicans make up only about 27% of more than 1 million voters, and Democrats make up 39%.

Republicans still trail but have narrowed margins to make it closer in two of Florida’s biggest counties: Hillsborough, which includes Tampa, and Duval, which includes Jacksonville. Republican incumbents Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio easily beat their Democratic challengers in both counties two years ago, although Trump lost there in 2020.

“Ron DeSantis and this extreme Republican Party have done everything possible to suppress voters, change voting laws, whether it is the complete wipeout of our vote by mail registrations, to making it more difficult for minority organizations to go out and do voter registration,” Nikki Fried, head of the Florida Democratic Party, said in an interview.

Fried said Democrats plan to mobilize the party by getting people interested and re-engaging inactive voters. She doesn’t think the number of registered Republican voters will translate to people going to the polls.

Kevin Wagner, a pollster and researcher at Florida Atlantic University, said party registration is a good predictor of voter turnout, but that doesn’t guarantee that voters will actually show up.

“It’s not necessarily clear what turnout is going to look like, so just because you have more registered voters doesn’t mean you’ll have more voters on Election Day,” Wagner said. “It’s important to not get so fixated on registration numbers and spend a little more time on turnout numbers, because your vote is only important if you cast it.”

One example? Democrats in Miami-Dade voted in far fewer numbers in 2022 than Republicans there. What had been a Democratic stronghold along the state’s Gold Coast suddenly looked red – despite big margins for Democrats in voter registrations – as Republicans DeSantis and Rubio easily swept the vote there. DeSantis was the first GOP gubernatorial candidate to do that in Miami-Dade in 20 years.

Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, has been monitoring voter data for months from the state’s 67 county election offices to calculate exactly when Republicans would cross the 1 million advantage threshold. It happened Sunday, after trending toward the GOP for months.

The new figures include only registered voters defined as “active,” meaning someone who voted in the last two elections and whose address was verified.

Rhonda Sue Sammon, 70, a retiree from Grant-Valkaria along Florida’s Atlantic Coast, switched her party registration to Republican to vote against Trump in the presidential primaries. Her husband did the same. She plans to change her registration back to “no party affiliation” after November’s elections.

“We are not fans of Mr. Trump,” she said. “I’m currently dismayed that the GOP hasn’t done a better job of trying to groom other candidates, younger ones, ones that are more measured and balanced, more middle of the road. Trump is divisive, and he’s not the kind of leader that I think that America deserves.”

Nearly 200 miles away, on Florida’s other coast, Thomas Belcher, 88, of Sarasota and 40 other residents in a senior living development changed their party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.  

The reason? The sister of Michael Flynn, the controversial national security adviser during Trump’s presidency, was running for a seat on the board that oversees the prestigious Sarasota Memorial Hospital. The move will allow them to vote Aug. 20 against Mary Flynn O’Neill, who objected to how the hospital handled the pandemic.

The deadline to register for the November elections is Oct. 7.

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Republished with permission of Fresh Take Florida.