“I think that was a direct result of Covid”: Those who moved from very Democratic states to Florida may have actually strengthened the state’s Republican leaning, analysts say.
We've previously covered how some Americans have been moving to Florida and ditching states like California.
But our analysts also think those transplants packed their politics, which has contributed to what was previously considered a swing state leaning Republican in the 2020 and 2024 election. And, they think the Covid pandemic is a likely reason why.
"The voter registration Republican advantage is over a million voters compared to Democrats, and that changed three years ago, and I think that was a direct result of Covid," FIU Prof. Kathryn A. DePalo-Gould said. "I think culturally, those who left the blue states to come to the red state of Florida now also brought with them a lot of their ideology and certainly their party affiliation that's now Republican."
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There are 5.3 million active Republican voters compared to 4.3 million active Democratic voters, according to figures released by county elections supervisors in August. About 3.9 million voters don’t affiliate with any political party or affiliate with minor parties.
The state’s changing political landscape is unusual because of how quickly it became so conservative. In 2020, Democrats held about a 97,000 vote registration edge over Republicans. Since then, there has been a rapid increase in registered Republican voters.
Having this large of a voter registration edge is a win for the Florida Republican Party, who touted the party as “the most successful party in the nation,” according to a statement from August from Evan Power, the Florida Republican Party chair.
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Democrats often point to demographic shifts in Florida being one reason for the voter registration edge, since a major influx of voters came into the state when DeSantis emerged as a leader of the GOP resistance to pandemic public health policies. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated an average of about 667 more people moved into the state than moved away every day between 2020 and 2021, but it did not specify their political party.
A Republican-backed law also took effect last year, which cracked down on third-party voter registration organizations that mobilized minority and college-age voters, which tend to vote Democrat. The law in part raised the fines for violations like turning in paperwork to the wrong county or hiring a noncitizen volunteer, from $1,000 to $250,000, and reduced the amount of time the groups can return registration applications from 14 days to 10 days.
Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, called the voter registration edge “empty rhetoric.”
“While Florida Republicans have spent years dismantling voting rights to inflate their numbers and take victory laps on the voter registration gap, it hasn’t stopped Florida Democrats from winning elections like the Jacksonville Mayor’s race or flipping State House District 35, both wins that demonstrated a growing lack of enthusiasm for the Republican Party and an increasing number of Independent voters rejecting extremism in Florida,” she said in a statement.
Fried noted that since Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race, the state experienced an influx of 18,000 volunteers signing up with the Florida Democratic Party, which she called a “massive momentum shift.”
