Florida Republicans: Model of Electoral Success

If Republicans intend to dig themselves out of their current electoral rut, studying Florida would be a good place to start.

Once a purple swing state that was considered to be in play as late as 2020, the Sunshine State has turned a bright-crimson shade of red over the course of Ron DeSantis’s time in office. The Florida governor has overseen record growth in registered Republican voters: Republicans added “over 553,000 voters to statewide GOP rolls since 2018, after adjusting for people who died, moved, switched parties or stopped voting,” Bloomberg reported in an election postmortem. “By Election Day, the GOP had 292,000 more registered voters than Democrats, state data show, flipping a 257,000-vote Democratic advantage in 2018.” Barack Obama narrowly won Florida in 2012, and before 2022, the state had decided its past three governors’ races by about one percentage point. In the midterms, however, Floridians elected Republicans to every statewide office for the first time since Reconstruction. Marco Rubio was reelected to the Senate by over 16 points, cleaning the clock of Democrat Val Demings, who had been considered a strong challenger. That’s more than double his margin of victory in 2016. And the GOP won 20 of Florida’s 28 U.S. House seats — a net gain of four.

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Nate Hochman

Nate Hochman was a staff writer at National Review.

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If Republicans intend to dig themselves out of their current electoral rut, studying Florida would be a good place to start.

Once a purple swing state that was considered to be in play as late as 2020, the Sunshine State has turned a bright-crimson shade of red over the course of Ron DeSantis’s time in office. The Florida governor has overseen record growth in registered Republican voters: Republicans added “over 553,000 voters to statewide GOP rolls since 2018, after adjusting for people who died, moved, switched parties or stopped voting,” Bloomberg reported in an election postmortem. “By Election Day, the GOP had 292,000 more registered voters than Democrats, state data show, flipping a 257,000-vote Democratic advantage in 2018.” Barack Obama narrowly won Florida in 2012, and before 2022, the state had decided its past three governors’ races by about one percentage point. In the midterms, however, Floridians elected Republicans to every statewide office for the first time since Reconstruction. Marco Rubio was reelected to the Senate by over 16 points, cleaning the clock of Democrat Val Demings, who had been considered a strong challenger. That’s more than double his margin of victory in 2016. And the GOP won 20 of Florida’s 28 U.S. House seats — a net gain of four.