Q&A of the Day – Florida Counties with the Biggest Political Shifts
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Question I’d been meaning to ask. Of the counties that flipped red in Florida last year, which ones had the biggest shifts?
Bottom Line: The reality that Palm Beach County flipped red last year and the significance of it still isn’t lost on me. In 2005, when I left Georgia for South Florida, I remember seeing that Palm Beach County was a D+28 county. Then Republican Congressional leader Jack Kingston told me in my final show that “we’ll miss you, but they need you more than we do down there”. The irony of the progress we’ve made in Florida contrasted with what’s significantly shifted the other way in Georgia since isn’t lost on me btw. I remember setting a goal of seeing Palm Beach County flip politically before retiring. Well, I’m nowhere close to retiring which is to say that we’re way ahead of my expectations.
By the time the dust had settled, and all of the votes had been counted last November, only five of Florida’s 67 counties had voted for Democrats. That’s measured not just through the prism of how Governor DeSantis performed, but by which party won the most statewide seats overall. Those five remaining blue counties are Alachua, Broward, Gasden, Leon and Orange. All election cycles are different, which is why the appropriate comparison for last year’s election cycle was the midterm cycle of 2018. Therefore, my comparisons will be between those two years. There were eight counties which broke for Democrats in 2018 but that broke for Republicans in 2022:
- Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Seminole & St. Lucie
And while it’s huge that more counties flipped from Democrats to Republicans from one cycle to the next, than remained in majority support of Democrats, it’s the size of the counties that flipped that’s even more significant. Two of the three largest in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. six of the top eight with Duval, Hillsborough, Osceola and Pinellas in the mix. And beyond the impressiveness of the number and size of the counties that shifted, there’s also the geography as well. From South Florida to North Florida counties flipped. That’s important because the shift was something which couldn’t just be explained by the demographic mix of voters in a particular locale. So, about the size of the shifts from one cycle to the next in directly addressing your question...
Here’s the change in the vote for governor from 2018 to 2022 within the counties which flipped.
- Pinellas: 12.8%
- Seminole: 14.1%
- Duval: 16.1%
- Hillsborough: 18.3%
- Palm Beach: 20%
- St. Lucie: 22.8%
- Osceola: 27.6%
- Miami-Dade: 32.2%
So, there you go. And as you see, the political flip in Florida’s formerly blue counties is a story that becomes even more impressive with every layer of the onion you peel back. There were no small flips. Every formerly blue county moved to the right by double-digits including three counties that moved to the right by greater than twenty points including the state’s third largest in Palm Beach and one over thirty percent in Miami-Dade, the largest county in the state. Now, it's worth noting that Democrats continue to hold voter registration advantages in all these counties – though Republicans have been making up ground in them over the past four years as well. What it indicates is that the biggest key to the huge flips by Republicans were winning registered NPA’s by wide margins. There’s no certainty that it will continue into the future, however, there’s no doubt that there’s unprecedented momentum on the right in Florida.
Conventional wisdom holds that the 2022 election was a high-water mark for Florida’s Republicans. If I were a betting person, I’d probably be willing to take that bet for at least the near future. So much came together for the record election outcome last fall, it’d be hard to replicate. However, conventional wisdom last year didn’t call for the pervasiveness of the political shift in our state either – so it’s possible much of what’s happened here is sustainable. One of the key reasons for that train of thought is what the potential impact of consersative victories in counties like Palm Beach can do going forward. Increase candidate participation in elections at all levels. A lot of potentially good candidates have avoided running in elections in many of Florida’s historically blue counties due to the perception that offices were unwinnable for them. That could and hopefully will change going forward. If so, last cycle could actually be the start of a bigger political movement within our state as opposed to the peak of it.