Florida has become a hot topic again in recent weeks for Democrats, as some hope Governor nominee David Jolly, and Senate nominee Angie Nixon could seriously threaten the stranglehold Republicans have had on politics in the last decade. In 2016, Democrats had a 300,000-person advantage in voter registration, but now? Republicans have over a 1.5 million advantage. Registration isn’t everything, of course, but it paints a picture of a state becoming more and more Republican, as opposed to just simply becoming more “Trumpy”.
Some though, simply hope that if Hispanics vote much like they did in 2016, Democrats can win. While that is true for certain House districts in Florida, the state as a whole is much more complicated than that. Florida is a majority-White state, and one that has experienced significant population changes in the past few decades. The point is, it’s very likely that White people in the state are more Republican leaning than they were in 2016 and in the Obama era. In 2016, Florida 100K Districts that were majority White voted 6% right of majority White areas as a whole. However, in 2024, they voted 11% right of the nation’s majority-White 100K districts as a whole. Even as White areas basically voted the same in 2016 as in 2024, Florida’s majority-White 100K Districts moved right by 5%, which is a big reason why the state went from R+1 in 2016 to R+13 in 2024.
The main reason for this? It likely isn’t people changing their minds about the way they vote, but the electorate itself changing. From 2010-2024, Florida’s White areas gained an estimated 2.1 million people, or about 8% population growth. It’s been one of the fastest-growing states for decades now.
The thing is, more than 2 million people have also moved to Florida since then. Because Florida is one of the oldest states in the country and is home to many retirement communities, sadly… a lot of people die in Florida. It’s very likely that older people who moved to Florida from, say, New York and the Northeast in the 90’s and 2000’s have been replaced by much more conservative older people from other parts of the country, like the Midwest. The point is, Democrats in Florida can’t just expect Obama -> Trump voters to suddenly vote Democrat again, because they probably don’t exist in great enough numbers.
Another issue for Democrats is that White people in Florida aren’t super college-educated, which is a huge problem for Democrats. If there was just one trend you could identify in the Trump era, it’s that college-educated people have moved left, and non-college-educated people have moved right, regardless of any other factors. Florida’s Majority White 100K Districts are 35% college-educated, compared to 37% for the national average for Majority White 100K Districts.
The lesson here is simply to remember demographics can change over time, even if it doesn’t look like it on the surface! It’s not even unlikely because all these conservative old people are moving to Florida; states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and even Ohio can remain competitive for Democrats. You certainly shouldn’t think about Florida as some kind of vote sink, but it’s gotten a lot tougher for Democrats to win. Jolly and Nixon will have to convince a lot of White, 3x Trump voters to give them a chance; the only question is… how will they go about that?
Cape Coral Picture via: Picture From: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Cape_Coral%2C_Florida.jpg/250px-Cape_Coral%2C_Florida.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=parser&utm_content=thumbnail
https://x.com/MichaelPruser/status/2094817562215461266
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