Florida’s voter registration by party – March 2021
Bottom Line: The voter registration momentum Republicans built throughout the 2020 Election cycle didn’t end with Election Day. By the end of 2020 Florida’s Democrats maintained the smallest advantage over Republicans in voter registration in our state’s history. Florida’s Republican party benefitted from a combination of Floridians reregistering as Republicans in addition to most new voters registering as Republicans. This indicated that a majority of those relocating to Florida, even from Blue states, had been Republicans seeking refuge here. There was a significant shift to start the new year however. The state’s first voter registration update reflecting changes through January showed both major political parties losing registered voters with Republicans losing about 13,500 more voters than Democrats as voter rolls were reconciled at year end along with many Floridians who reregistered as NPA’s in January. The question is whether January was an outlier or the start of a new trend. Yesterday the Florida Division of Elections provided the updated voter rolls reflecting all of Florida’s registered voters through February. Here are changes thus far this year.
- DEM: -20,946 (loss of an additional 4,088 voters over January)
- GOP: -35,324 (loss of an additional 5,105 voters over January)
- NPA/Other: +34,525 (gain of an additional 13,930 voters over January)
Both Democrats and Republicans continued to hemorrhage voters in February with Republicans losing about a thousand more voters than Democrats. Two months doesn’t equal a trend either but want we saw in play in January was once again in play during February and could well be part of a new trend. Many Floridians are frustrated with the political parties and it could be that it’s manifesting itself by not registering in either party. Over the past few decades, it’s been somewhat typical for NPA and minor parties to gain more voters in non-election years, but it’s unusual to see both major political parties lose voters to the extent they have in the first two months of this year. On balance this isn’t good news for Democrats or Republicans, but it’s remained worse for Republicans for the first two months of 2021.
The current breakout of registered voters looks like this...
- DEM: 36.4%
- GOP: 35.6%
- NPA/Other: 28%
Democrats maintain a sub-1% advantage over Republicans in voter registration but if this trend continues it could be that NPA’s and minor parties find parity with the two major party's. To be continued.
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