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Q&A – Florida’s Electorate Today Compared To When Obama Won Florida
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Today’s entry: @brianmuddradio w/Republicans now leading in voter registration, I was wondering how big the shift has been since Obama won Florida?
Bottom Line: It’s been huge. First, think about this. This side of Nikki Fried’s narrow win in Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner race in 2018, you have to go back to the 2012 election cycle to find a statewide win by a Democrat. That year you had two, with President Obama eking out a win by a narrower margin than he won by in 2008 and with Bill Nelson easily being re-elected to the Senate. Of course, as a future sign of changes in Florida, that would be his last election win as then Governor Rick Scott beat out Nelson for his Senate seat in 2018. So, about what’s changed in Florida politically over the past nine years.
In 2012 Democrats led Republicans in voter registration in Florida by 558,272 votes. When you take a step back and think about it, that’s a pretty significant margin. Still, Obama only cleared Romney in 2012 by just over 74,000 votes. The reason the GOP’s deficit in Florida didn’t feel as big as it may now sound is because NPA’s have reliably broken mostly for Republicans over the past thirty years. Republicans now hold a 4,318-voter lead over Democrats in registration. That means there’s been a net change of 562,590 voters to the Republican’s advantage in nine years. And of course, there’s no indication the momentum is set to change anytime soon. But just taking a look at the change in the number of voters doesn’t tell the entire story.
Here’s the voter percentage breakout in Florida in 2012:
- DEM: 40%
- GOP: 35.4%
- NPA/Minor: 24.6%
And here’s the current voter registration composition today:
- DEM: 35.7%
- GOP: 35.8%
- NPA/Minor: 28.5%
Because of Florida’s population growth, total numbers are up generally, including for Democrats over nine years ago. What’s clear though is that while Republicans have slightly grown their overall share of voter registrations overtime, the bigger story has been the significant hemorrhaging Democrats have experienced during this time with most of their lost ground going into the NPA/Minor party category. When you take a look at the actual partisan shift since 2012 in Florida here’s what that looks like:
- DEM: -4.3%
- GOP: +0.4%
- NPA/Minor: +3.9%
This means that Democrats are now generally at about a 5-point disadvantage in statewide elections relative to where they were not quite a decade ago. What’s more, as I’d already mentioned, the biggest rise coming in NPA’s isn’t ideal for Democrats either as Republicans have won the majority of the NPA vote in every election cycle in Florida since 1972. 2018 turned out to be a historically good cycle for Democrats nationally, which likely was the main reason so many of the elections were as close as they were that year. Given what’s happened in Florida since then, let alone over the better part of the past decade, there’s a chance the days of super close elections in Florida are mostly a thing of the past. Current polling, which shows 2022 leads for DeSantis and Rubio by a minimum of 6-points based on the poll and hypothetical matchups considered, and commonly by double-digits, could be an indication of not just the political landscape for those races next year, but Florida generally into in the future.