Florida voter registration by party – January 2021
Bottom Line: While researching for today’s Q&A, I realized the Florida Division of Elections has updated voter rolls reflecting the final registrations for 2020. The previous update, reflecting voter registrations on Election Day, showed Republicans having narrowed the advantage held by Democrats to the smallest margin in Florida’s history, at under 1%. Did that trend hold after Election Day?
Here are the takeaways:
- Republicans have narrowed the partisan registration gap to the lowest record in state history (since records began to be kept in 1972)
- Voters have been more likely to register in a political party compared to past years (NPA’s had been the fastest growing voting block prior to 2020)
There was a 2020 surge in Republican voter registrations in Florida. After Democrats outpaced Republicans in overall registrations early in the year, driven by the Democrat’s Presidential Primary in March, Republicans have once again outpaced Democrats in voter registrations - continuing the long-term Florida trends.
Here’s the change in voter registration by party in Florida in 2020:
- DEM: +329,434
- GOP: +457,334
- NPA/Other: +242,140
The current breakout of registered voters looks like this...
- DEM: 36.5%
- GOP: 35.8%
- NPA/Other: 27.7%
The answer is that yes, voter registrations occurring after Election Day through year end continued to favor Republicans with the gap being narrowed from .9% to .7% by year end. It’s a remarkable change when you consider that in 1980 Democrats held a greater than two to one advantage over Republicans. As I illustrated in today’s Q&A, the continued progress by Republicans in Florida is a combination of both natives moving towards the right in addition to those relocating. What comes next should be interesting. Donald Trump has now opened up a post-presidency office in South Florida and is poised to continue to work within the Republican party rather than starting a third-party as had been rumored. Without a doubt his influence in Florida’s politics was positive for Republicans in recent years.
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