Former President Trump cemented Florida’s status as a deep-red state on Tuesday, flipping multiple counties up and down the state.
Miami-Dade County saw a Republican win at the presidential level for the first time in 36 years, while the greater Tampa area also went red. Trump also flipped Jacksonville’s Duval County and large swaths of blue-leaning Central Florida.
Trump carried the state by 13 points on Tuesday, dramatically improving on his roughly 3-point margin in 2020 and his 1-point margin in 2016.
While Florida has been on a GOP trajectory for nearly ten years, Trump’s victory and Vice President Harris’s underperformance underscores the degree to which he has tightened his political hold on the state and is also emblematic of the former president’s over-performance on election night.
“I looked at Duval and I said Duval is a microcosm of Georgia,” said Florida Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “He wins this by five, he’s going to win Georgia for sure.”
The economy and immigration reigned supreme for voters’ top issues in Florida, like in much of the country. According to the AP VoteCast, 41 percent of voters said the economy was their most important issue, followed by immigration at 23 percent and abortion at nine percent.
“Now we have Trump crushing it by 13 points. Part of that is kind of an affirmation of [Trump’s] agenda on issues like immigration, economy and inflation,” said Justin Sayfie, a Florida-based Republican strategist.
Other Republicans have attributed the increased success in the state, in part, to a conservative populist message on issues like immigration and the economy.
“What Trump helped add to the conversation is he helped a lot of Florida politicians speak populist conservatism. I mean, that’s how you win Miami Dade,” O’Connell said.
The messaging played well with the state’s Latino population, particularly in South Florida’s Miami Dade County and Central Florida’s Osceola County. Trump notably flipped Osceola County, which was carried by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Biden by double digits, by just over one point. Miami Dade is home to a large Cuban American population, while Osceola County is home to a sizable Puerto Rican population,
Sayfie and other Florida Republicans argue that Tuesday night’s results were the culmination of a number of factors, like over 10 years of population growth in the state, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) widely praised handling of the coronavirus pandemic and a strengthened GOP infrastructure. Trump notably made Florida the center of the Republican universe when he became a resident of the state in 2020.
“This didn’t happen overnight,” O’Connell said. “Mechanically it started with Rick Scott,” he continued, referring to Scott’s first gubernatorial victory in 2010.
“After that first one, the Florida Republican Party really started the voter registration drive,” O’Connell said.
There are currently over one million more registered Republicans than Democrats in the state.
Scott, who served two terms as governor, won reelection to the Senate on Tuesday, improving on his past statewide margins of victory in Florida. The senator in the past had narrowly won his election and reelection bids in the state, but defeated former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell (D-Fla.) by over 12 points on Tuesday.
Chris Hartline, a senior adviser to the Scott campaign, attributed much of the victory to Republicans’ voter registration advantage in the state.
“It’s really hard to compare Florida to what’s happening in other places in the country,” Hartline said. “We won Hillsborough, we won Pinellas, we won Seminole, we performed better in Orange. Is that because of a failure of Harris with suburban voters or is it because we have more registered Republicans in the state than we used to?”
“And it’s hard to not completely ignore the tactical side of it, which is Florida Democrats do not have a functioning party,” he added.
Florida Democrats argued that there were bright spots on Tuesday, including a 25-percent increase in turnout from 2022, and the fact that a majority of voters favored legislation that would have enshrined abortion rights in the state. The measure ultimately failed because it did not meet the 60-percent threshold.
“Over the next four years, Florida Democrats will continue to organize, mobilize and hold Republicans accountable — because our job is bigger than one election,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried in a statement following Tuesday’s election.
But like Democrats across the country, the party in Florida is grappling with what went wrong nationally and within their home state.
“Democrats had a disaster at the top of the ticket, which I publicly stated at the beginning of the race,” said John Morgan, a prominent Central Florida-based attorney and Democratic donor.
“Florida is officially Texas and Pennsylvania is officially Florida,” he continued.
However there are Florida Republicans that are urging their colleagues to not get too comfortable in the state, warning that the same conditions that helped Republicans in the state could help Democrats down the road.
“At this moment, Florida is a red state, but I don’t think the Republicans can get cocky and the reason is simple. You have a very transient population and things change and eventually the Democrats may get it together,” O’Connell said.
“Parties are set up in our two-party system so they can reinvent themselves. That’s why you can’t get cocky.”
