Once considered a legitimate battleground state that went for Democrat and Republican presidents, Florida appears to be as gone to Democrats as California is to Republicans, given current voter registration data.
The GOP has taken a strong edge in the Sunshine State as voter trends in recent years are increasingly favorable to the party,
Liberty Nation reports, “With Texas the only state locked in for the GOP holding more than 20 votes, they have consistently needed to land well over half of the votes available in battleground states just to eke out narrow victories in the three races they have won in the 21st century – George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and Donald Trump in 2016.”
“That is why the latest news from Florida resounds with significance well beyond the boundaries of the Sunshine State. The Florida Board of Elections has revealed that, for the first time in at least the 30 years for which data is available – and likely ever – Republicans now outnumber Democrats by more than 100,000 in what has long been considered arguably the single most important swing state in the nation, now upgraded to 30 electoral votes after the latest census,” the report noted further.
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Florida has famously been attracting freedom-loving refugees from Blue America since the outbreak of the pandemic.
This has raised fears in some circles that those escaping the endless spiral of tax-and-spend liberalism might nevertheless bring their politics with them – witness the tide of leftist people and companies abandoning California for trendy Austin, TX.
But this revelation of Republicans overtaking Democrats in Florida all but puts that argument to rest, at least for the foreseeable future in this particular state which has come to be known, and proudly so by its brash, Trump-style Governor Ron DeSantis, as Free Florida.
New banner Memo – From the Desk of Senior Political Analyst Tim Donner 1) If Florida can be turned into a reliably red state, it will alter the entire underlying calculus for presidential elections to which we’ve become accustomed for decades.
“This is a milestone moment in Florida’s history,” said Helen Aguirre Ferré, executive director of the Republican Party of Florida.
A number of Democrats have sounded off about how “bleak” Florida is looking for their party.
“It feels a little bit like we’re kind of set up to fail,” an unnamed Florida Democratic official told The Hill. “It’s not any one person’s fault. A lot of these problems have existed for years. But for a party that has been decimated in the last few elections and especially the last one, I’m not seeing a sense of urgency yet.”
Steve Schale, a longtime Florida Democratic strategist, is telling his party that they could be in major trouble moving forward.
“Without a full-frontal, professional and accountable partisan effort to turn it around, sometime before the end of this year, there will be more Republicans registered in Florida than Democrats,” Schale wrote on his blog.
“That has NEVER happened before. And, given their voters have higher turnout scores — this isn’t a great place to start,” he added.