Why Florida is Unwinnable
In just a few election cycles, Florida went form a purple state to a solid red state.
Those of us who were involved, or at least deeply interested, remember the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida like it was yesterday. National news outlets were flipping back and forth as to who won the State of Florida’s 25 electoral votes. But those of us ‘in the know’ weren’t watching television, but were glued to the Florida Division of Elections’ website. Even though almost the entire state had been counted, the fact that two precincts in Palm Beach County had still not reported gave us Democrats a glimmer of hope. These early-morning hours were spent constantly pressing the refresh button on my late 90s version of Netscape. But eventually, the networks caught wind of where the “real” results were and crashed the Division’s website. Bastards!
Even though George W. Bush had won the state, Florida solidified its status as the “most purple” state in the nation, with Tim Russert proclaiming that everything during the 2000 election relied on “Florida, Florida, Florida.” This was a moniker that Florida would continue to hold for the next eighteen years, with Florida’s 2018 midterm elections being some of the closest that the state had seen in modern history.
Despite the closeness of the elections, the Republicans were always able to squeak out the victory with the narrowest of margins. While some candidates, like Commissioner of Agriculture candidate Nikki Fried benefited from Republican undervotes, it was usually a losing cause for Democrats. Senator Bill Nelson was the only Democratic candidate that could pull off impressive wins, but that too ended in 2018.
And while 2018 is only a few years removed, the political landscape of Florida has drastically changed. With Republicans dominating the voter registration numbers, registered Republicans are on the cusp of having over one million more registered voters than Democrats. And with the gap between Democrats and Non Party Affiliated and minor party voters being less than the gap between Democrats and Republicans, the thought of winning any statewide election in Florida is essentially 0%. Of course, extreme circumstances like Alabama’s Roy Moore’s “I asked her mother if I could date her 13-year old daughter” debacle could change that. But in a straight-up race, Democrats, for now, are doomed.
Now, I hear a lot of people saying “voter registration and vote choice are not the same thing.” If we are talking about a 100% direct correlation, then no it isn’t, like almost anything else on Earth. But if we look at the gap in votes US Senate Race in 2022 between Val Demings and Marco Rubio, and compare that with the gap in voter registration numbers at the precinct level, we see that the R² is .8956, showing a very high correlation. The chart below shows the linear regression.
With this being the case (registered Democrats basically voting Democratic and Republicans likewise with their party) we can see where the problem lies. With that, let’s look at some extremely basic scenarios to show how dominant the Republicans have become in Florida by taking the current voter registration numbers a modeling the 2024 election using basic assumptions as well as 2020 voting turnout and behavior. In the examples below, we will be using the book closing number for March of 2024.
Base Model 1: All is equal
Florida tends to be a high-turnout state, usually hovering around the low- to mid-70%. Since 2000, when the turnout was 70% for Bush v. Gore, turnout in Florida has always been over 70%. In 2016, turnout was 74.48% with 2020 having a 77.17% rate. With that, doing our “all equal” model, let’s round turnout for all voters at 75%, including NPAs and minor parties. Let’s also say that NPAs and minor parties are also split 50/50. We’ll also say that 90% of registered Democrats vote Democratic, and 90% of Republicans vote Republican (which is probably not accurate, and actually helping Democrats in these models).
With the above criteria, and all being equal, Republicans would win the State of Florida’s major party vote with 52.5% of the vote.
However, while we can’t really increase the Democratic and Republican vote totals (because we can only go up to 100%), let’s change the NPA/Minor voting behavior. What percentage of NPAs and minor party voters would have to vote Democratic in order for Democrats to win? For Democrats to pull off a 50.1% win, Democrats would need to win 59% of NPA/minor party voters. But remember, this is if turnout is equal among all parties. NPA/minor party voters usually have a lower turnout rate, anywhere between 5% to 20% less than the major parties. For example, in Pinellas County, NPA turnout was 16% lower than Republicans and 12% lower than Democrats.
Base Model 2: NPA turnout reduced by 13%
On average, NPA/minor party turnout in presidential election years is about 13% less than the major parties. Therefore, for this second model, we are going to reduce the NPA/minor party turnout by 6.5%, to 68.5%, while increasing the turnout for both major parties by 6.5%, to 81.5%.
If we keep both the Democratic and Republican voter at 90% support in this new scenario, Democrats would have to win 61% of the NPA/minor party voters to win a slight 50.1% victory. To put this in perspective, in 2018, Andrew Gillum won 54% of NPA/minor party voters according the CNN’s exit poll. Therefore, for Democrats to win, this would require a substantial increase in Democratic support among NPA/minor party voters.
Model 3: Replicate 2020 county-level turnout rates
Of course, turnout isn’t going to be exactly the same across the state, and this is a problem for Democrats. What usually drives higher turnout numbers in Florida are Republican voters, not Democrats. Therefore, using the same 90% support criteria for Democrats and Republicans, let’s replicate the turnout based on county-level turnout in 2020, which 2024 should be about the same.
If the turnout rate in Florida at the county level is the exact same as it was in 2020, using today’s voter registration figures, Democrats would need to win 65.5% of NPA/minor party voters in order to win.
While Models #1 and #2 would require historic NPA/minor party support for Democrats, Model #3 is basically outside the realm of reality. However, this model is actually based on the county turnout of 2020, thus is actually a more accurate representation of the likely 2024 electorate than the other two.
Just one final note on this one, if Democrats received the 54% of NPA/minor party support that Gillum and Nelson received in 2018, Democrats would lose 52.9% to 47.1% of the major party vote, a big deviation from six years ago, where it was nearly dead even.
Model 4: Total replication of 2020
In the previous models, we guessed how voters would vote, using 90/10 for the major parties, and adjusting the NPA/minor party to see how Democrats could win. In this model, I’ll be taking the voting behavior of my 2020 predictive model (which has accurately predicted the last four elections in Florida) as well at the county level turnout. This is what I would call the “most likely scenario” model.
With this mirroring of the 2020 election with 2024 registration numbers, Republicans are poised to win 55.5% of the major party vote while Democrats are likely to win 44.4%, giving the Republicans an 11% advantage in Florida.
Can Democrats ever win Florida again?
This is the big question, because the answer isn’t really clear. And, in all honestly, we have to ask two questions.
The first question to be asked is if state and local Democrats have not been doing all that they can to register voters. Since Nikki Fried has taken over as the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, there are 502k less registered Democrats. Therefore, Democrats simply registering more voters, as well as turning them out, might be the key to winning again.
The other questions is whether Florida’s demographics have really changed, and has it become more Republican. Because of the Democrats laziness to register and turn out voters, we really can’t say if this is the case. But if Democrats register more, and have turnout rates as high as Republicans and the problem still persists, then it likely be a demographics shift. But in all honest, we really don’t know.
I agree right up until the end:
"The other questions is whether Florida’s demographics have really changed, and has it become more Republican. Because of the Democrats laziness to register and turn out voters, we really can’t say if this is the case." Right question but blindly accepting "Active Voter" statistics misses the impact of "list maintenance" (AKA "the purge"). A huge number of Democrats were shifted from "Active" to "Inactive" status and smaller, but still significant number completely dropped from the voter rolls.
What happened? My guess is spike in rents lead to "crisis moves" with people "forwarding" their snail mail rather than filing a full blown "change of address" The difference is that verification mail (using do not forward) from the County Supervisor of Elections off would have bounced without a new address.