For decades, the Sunshine State was the site of some of the most hotly contested elections in the country. But for this cycle, at least, it looks solidly red.
For decades, the Sunshine State was the site of some of the most hotly contested elections in the country. But for this cycle, at least, it looks solidly red.
F lorida is the alligator that hasn’t barked. In years past, the June of an election year would have yielded a thousand think pieces on the swing state that once defined swing states. To mark the occasion, the clichés would have come out in force: “the biggest prize,” “the tightest of margins,” “the hottest of contests,” “the narrowest of divisions,” “as Florida goes, so goes the nation.”
For a century, this was true. Only in 1928, 1960, and 1992 did Floridians vote for a different presidential candidate than the U.S. at large. But, since 2020, when that happened again, something has felt different in the Sunshine State, and the tone of the coverage has shifted accordingly. It is, of course, true that most political analysts believe that the 2022 midterms will be a “red wave.” It is not true, however, that those analysts consider Republicans to be shoo-ins in every state. Pennsylvania’s statewide contests remain a toss-up. Nevada’s remain a toss-up. So, too, do Georgia’s and New Hampshire’s and Ohio’s and Arizona’s and Wisconsin’s. But Florida’s? Nobody is talking much about Florida’s. That Marco Rubio is going to beat Val Demings is assumed, and with Ron DeSantis, the buzz is all about 2024.
In previous Republican-wave years, this was most certainly not the case. In 1994, despite the GOP’s remarkable national performance, Jeb Bush lost a squeaker by 1.52 percentage points. In 2010, Rick Scott won by 1.2 points, and in 2014 — an even better year for Republicans nationwide than 2010 — that margin was reduced to 1.1 points. In 2016, Marco Rubio’s Senate reelection bid was deemed a “toss-up” until the end, while, in the presidential race, Donald Trump managed to overcome his ubiquitous “tie” rating to eke out a 0.4-point win. Nor have good Democratic years broken this trend. Despite a good Democratic showing in 2018, both the gubernatorial race and the Senate race were rated toss-ups until Election Day, and both were ultimately won by less than half a percentage point. In 2020, the state shifted more Republican, but that outcome wasn’t obvious until after the final ballots had been cast. Talking to NPR in late October of that year, Politico’s Matt Dixon explained that the fate of the “the nation’s largest swing state” would hinge “on a very, very, very small margin.”
This was not an unreasonable expectation. Between 1992 and 2016, Floridians cast 48,263,173 votes in presidential elections. Over that period, the difference between the number of votes cast for Republican candidates and the number of votes cast for Democratic candidates was 17,753 — a margin of 0.0004 percentage points in favor of the Democrats. For years, any self-respecting political pundit was obliged to answer the question, “What do you think will happen in Florida?” with a nonchalant “hell if I know.”
Now? Not so much. Outside of the PR shops, you will be hard-pressed to find anyone involved in politics who believes that the Democrats are going to win here in November. The gubernatorial race is presumed to be over. The Senate race is presumed to be over. Most of the races for the House are presumed to be over, and so is the contest for control of the statehouse. The Democratic Governors Association is essentially sitting this year out in the state, as are many of the donors who would like to see Marco Rubio gone from Washington, D.C. And the future? That’ll be an uphill climb, too. In 2008, the Democratic Party enjoyed a registration advantage in Florida of more than 700,000 voters. By the 2020 election, that lead had shrunk to 134,242, and today, it is gone entirely. In December 2021, the Florida Republican Party announced that, for the first time in the history of the state, it had a voter-registration advantage over the Democrats. By March of this year, that advantage had increased above 100,000. It is still growing.
Why has this happened? Some of it is due to the national environment, which is currently extremely helpful to the GOP. Some of it is due to the quality of the Republican Party’s candidates — whatever one thinks of their politics, it matters that one side has Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio, and the other has Nikki Fried, Charlie Crist, and Val Demings. Some of it is due to migration, and to the political changes wrought by Covid. And a lot of it — apologies for sounding like a broken record here — is due to the Democrats’ having gone crazy. Historically, Florida has remained a swing state through wild changes in population, wealth, economic focus, demographic makeup, and median age. But through its insistence upon perpetual masking, its preference for neologisms such as “Latinx,” its relentless attempts to push radicalism on children, and its indifference to the South American communists whom many Floridians have fled, the contemporary Democratic Party may finally have done the impossible: For now, at least, it may have made Florida a safely red state.