Goodbye, swing state: Florida voters now lean Republican

Republicans are celebrating a historic milestone in the Sunshine State: they now have more registered voters than the Democrats.

“For the first time in the history of Florida we’ve now overtaken Democrats,” Gov. DeSantis said to applause, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Registered Republicans total around 5.1 million voters, exceeding Democrats by close to 4,000, according to the latest figures published by the Florida Division of Elections.

Until recently, Democrats held a notable advantage over Republicans in terms of voter registration.

During the 2010 midterms, when Republican Rick Scott won his gubernatorial bid, Democrats held a nearly 568,000 voter advantage. When DeSantis took office in 2018, that number fell to 264,000. Last year, during the nation’s presidential election, Democrats reported 134,000 more voters than Republicans.

Trump won Florida by a comfortable margin, once again demonstrating that Democrats’ voter advantage does not necessarily translate into electoral victories.  

Earlier this month, DeSantis attributed the shift towards the GOP in part to people moving to Florida due to anti-lockdown, anti-mandate policies he pushed during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“You are seeing people move to states that value freedom,” DeSantis said during a Nov. 5 speech at the National Conference of State Legislatures. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the governor also joked that if Republicans hadn’t left New Jersey, they could have defeated Gov. Phil Murphy.

But Helen Aguirre Ferré, the executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, whose family is from Nicaragua, believes the Democrats have helped Republicans win over Latinos by embracing rhetoric that is reminiscent of Latin America’s failed socialist policies.

“This is a milestone moment in Florida’s history,” said Aguirre Ferré. But that doesn’t mean she plans on allowing her party to stop working to turn Florida red for good.

“In a state like Florida, when you consider that you get 1,000 new residents a day, you really can’t stop,” Ferré said. “You have to keep going and you have to keep engaging.”