Fresh Take Florida — Prior to the Aug. 20 primary election, the number of registered Republican voters in Florida officially surpassed Democrats by more than 1 million, a milestone reflecting political shifts in the Sunshine State and the largest margin for the GOP since the late 1980s.
The newest figures show 5.38 million active Republican voters, compared to 4.36 million Democrats—a difference of 1.026 million voters. That means Republicans make up about 39% of Florida’s voters, compared to about 32% for Democrats. A significant number of voters in Florida, 3.92 million, or about 29%, are affiliated with no political party or the minor parties.
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.”
Since the last presidential election—when Donald Trump won in Florida 51 to 48% four years ago— Republicans have now become the dominant political party in eight more of the state’s 67 counties; Republicans now make up majorities in 57 of 67 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. Democrats still hold comfortable margins in some of Florida’s biggest, urban counties—Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach (home to Trump). Orange and Osceola.
“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.
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.”
The deadline to register for the November elections is Oct. 7.
The full version of this story can be found at AroundOsceola.com.
Matthew Cupelli and Kirsten Maselka contributed to this reporting during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at landerson2@ufl.edu.
