How Often Florida’s Congressional Delegation Has Voted with President Biden
Bottom Line: Only two members of Florida’s congressional delegation voted entirely the same way during the first three years of the Biden presidency. That’s one takeaway from 538’s newly released “Biden Score”, which measures how often all members of Congress have voted with President Biden’s position. But while there are only two members who’ve voted the same way in the era of Biden, there certainly are general themes. For example, no member of Florida’s Republican delegation voted more often than 13% of the time with President Biden’s position. At the same time, no member of Florida’s Democrat delegation has voted less than 80% of the time with the president’s position. There also might be a few surprises with who the most likely and least likely to vote with President Biden happens to be.
Let’s start with Florida’s Democrat delegation. The Floridian most likely to vote with President Biden’s position has voted 96.2% with him. Who do you think that member of Congress happens to be? If you guessed Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who represents South Florida’s 20th Congressional district you’d be correct. Meanwhile, who do you think the Democrat representative is who votes least often with President Biden’s position at 80% of the time? It’s South Florida’s 23rd district Congressional Representative Jared Moskowitz. On the other side of the coin...
Which Republican member of Florida’s House delegation do you think has been the least likely to vote with President Biden’s position? If you guessed Florida’s 21st District Representative Brian Mast – you'd be correct. Conversely, which Republican member of Florida’s House delegation has been the most likely to vote with President Biden’s position, that’s been Matt Gaetz at 9.2% of the time. That’s likely to surprise many people who’ve looked at Gaetz as a sort of conservative standard bearer given his led ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. However, as I pointed out at the time, Gaetz’s voting record reflected something a bit different. Speaking of different...so too are the voting records of Florida’s two Republican Senators.
Senator Rick Scott has only voted 5.1% of the time with President Biden’s position while Marco Rubio has done so 13% of the time. As for other Congressional Representatives of note throughout the listening area... Bill Posey has voted with Biden 2% of the time and the two members of Florida’s Congressional delegation that have voted identically over the prior three years are...Lois Frankel and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz with 94.4% Biden scores. Both Frankel and Wasserman-Schultz won their closest elections to date in 2022 (though both still won by double-digits). Those are races that few nationally have targeted but that are worth watching this year.