Q&A – How Policy & Politicians Shaped Florida’s Republican Voter Advantage 

Q&A of the Day – How Policy and Politicians Shaped Florida’s Republican Voter Advantage 

Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.     

Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com    

Social: @brianmuddradio   

iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.      

Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Can you explain the concrete actions (laws, enforcement, immigration to FL) that has led to the massive Republican registration advantage? 

Bottom Line: There’s an easy answer observationally that one could point to what would speak to Florida’s surge in Republican voter registrations. Pandemic policy. I’m reminded of a Fox News hit I did in June of 2021, at the onset of the mass migration to Florida from pandemic lockdown states but prior Republicans having gained a voter registration advantage. The summation line I used at the time that became widely quoted was this: great policy makes a good politician. That was how I described Governor DeSantis’ pandemic policies as a driving force behind what was about to come in Florida.  

Now four years removed from the early lockdown months of the pandemic it can be easy to forget the substantive policy measures that specifically led to Florida swinging from a Democrat voter registration majority (which had been the case since the onset of partisan voter registrations in the early 1970’s) to what has become a massive Republican voter registration advantage most recently.  

There were a few key pandemic policies that Governor DeSantis enacted which have largely shaped Florida’s politics since. That included a couple of especially important laws and a series of executive actions during the peak of the pandemic in 2020. I’ll start with those.  

• DeSantis’ key executive actions were to: Focus policy on those most vulnerable to COVID. That included restricting visitors to nursing homes (and eventually prioritizing vaccines for older Floridians). Quickly reopening the state after the initial weeks of lockdowns in the spring of 2020, forcing local governments to reopen, mandating schools to allow classroom education in the fall of 2020 and to end all local government pandemic restrictions.  
• DeSantis’ key laws were: Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law banning mask mandates and forcing schools to reopen for classroom instruction and an Employee Bill of Rights preventing vaccine and mask mandates. 

On back of those policies the saying “the free state of Florida” was born and along with it a rush by right-leaning Americans to flee here given the opportunity. Florida has led in net migration ever since. Along with the migration the state has gone from being considered the ultimate swing state as recently as 2018 to what is now considered a reliable red state following the 2022 elections. But DeSantis’ pandemic policies alone aren’t responsible for the record Republican advantage in Florida. It began well before he arrived on the political scene.  

The peak of the Democrat voter registration advantage in Florida was 1978 when Democrats held an advantage of 1.63 million voters over Republicans in the state. In that election cycle Bob Graham was elected governor and Democrats held every statewide seat in the state and complete control over the Florida legislature. Here’s a look at the change in net party voter registration totals by decade starting with the 1980’s. 

• 80’s: Republicans gained 902k+ net voters 
• 90’s: Republicans gained 403k+ net voters 
• 00’s: Democrats gained 670k+ net voters 
• Rick Scott’s administration (8 years): Republicans gained 413k+ net voters 
• Ron DeSantis’ administration (5 years and three months' worth of data): Republicans have gained 892k+ net voters 

In only a little over five years Governor DeSantis has nearly matched the best decade for Republicans in Florida previously – the 1980’s. This exercise shows Governor DeSantis’ policies and the impact he has had in shaping our state’s politics has easily been the biggest catalyst of any politician in Florida’s history. In evaluating voter registration patterns in Florida since partisan voter registration data existed, we can get a picture of what politicians have the largest impact shaping Florida’s political makeup. They are... 

• #1 Ron DeSantis 
• #2 Ronald Reagan 
• #3 Barack Obama 
• #4 Rick Scott 
• #5 Jeb Bush 

It might seem odd that two presidents are in the top three in this analysis. After all what did Reagan and Obama have to do with directly influencing Florida’s political scene? Nothing at the state level, but both leaders who were and still are popular with their base had significant ambient impacts in our state (and beyond). While Florida’s story has mostly been one of net migration gains over time, both Reagan’s and Obama’s presidencies led to many Floridians changing their political stripes. This mostly happened by way of NPA registered voters reregistering as Republicans during the 80’s and Democrats during Obama’s first two years as president along with the natural net migration patterns producing more Republicans during the 80’s and more Democrats during Obama’s ascent to the prior to the onset of the Tea Party’s successful run (Which Rick Scott was part of) starting in 2010. I can conclusively make those deductions due to Democrats having had one-party control of Florida for most of Reagan’s time as president and conversely Republicans having one-party control of the state during Obama’s time as president when the short-lived but significant Democrat gains came.