Florida 2020 update – Voter Registration by Party
Bottom Line: A common theme of mine entering the 2020 cycle has been perception vs reality. For example, with greater than 90% of news coverage (according to the Media Research Center) of President Trump’s administration being negative, you might think he’s hugely unpopular. The reality is that most recently his average approval ratings have hit new highs for his administration. Here at home in Florida there might be a different version of a similar thing. There’s arguably been more attention provided to Andrew Gillum’s effort to try to register one million new Democrats prior to Election Day 2020, than his own problems. These include settling with the State of Florida over ethics violations, a still outstanding ethics charge against him with the State and news that he is under investigation by the feds over potential corruption dating back to 2015. This while he’s a paid CNN Contributor – go figure. It doesn’t exactly sound like the recipe for a successful voter registration effort and as it turns out... It hasn’t been.
Pulling the latest Florida voter registration totals we see the following:
Year
Republican Party of Florida
Florida Democratic Party
Minor Parties
No Party Affiliation
Total
2019
4,719,103
4,962,086
124,878
3,602,597
13,408,664
2018
4,718,720
4,975,895
113,489
3,588,518
13,396,622
Here are the changes in year over year voter registration in Florida:
- DEM:-13,809
- GOP:+383
- Minor:+11,389
- NPA:+14,079
This continues to paint a rather clear picture confirming longer term trends in Florida. Not registering to any political party continues to be the largest growing block of voters in the state while Minor Parties are the fastest growing segment. But what’s most telling is that while Republicans have made small additions to voter registration year over year, Democrats have hemorrhaged nearly 14k voters. Historically Florida’s Democrats haven’t reflected the most progressive wing of the party. Most recently Florida’s candidates have – with Democratic Socialist Andrew Gillum being the most notable example to date. While that might attract a passion among the most radical elements in the Democrat’s base, it’s still vastly out of the mainstream of Florida’s voters. Ironically enough, having Andrew Gillum head up a voter registration campaign for Democrats may cause others to continue to feel that they need to leave the party because the party has left them. TBC...