Ron DeSantis Probably Didn’t Turn Florida Red

In his presidential campaign, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis presented himself as a transformative leader who reshaped the politics of his home state. His 2022 re-election by 19 percentage points “wasn’t just a huge victory,” He argued. “It was really a fundamental realignment of Florida from being a swing state to being a red state.” and Most political analyses agrees that the sunshine state, Once known she has It is impossible to close the electionsis now a A comfortably Republican-leaning state.

But it’s unclear how much credit DeSantis himself deserves for this shift — or whether it even counts as a realignment at all. It is difficult to prove the most prominent argument in his favor, which is that Republicans moved to the state thanks to his policies related to the Corona virus. His investment in the state Republican Party appears to have paid real dividends, but several other factors contributed to the success of this campaign. He may not have had much to do with one of Florida Republicans’ biggest accomplishments over the past few years: their success with Hispanic voters.

Finally, there is significant doubt about whether DeSantis’s hypothesis — that Florida will remain a safe Republican state in the future — is correct. The data suggests that DeSantis’ defeat in 2022 was a historical anomaly, driven by a large gap in partisan turnout, and it is unwise to make sweeping statements based on just one election.

“Political refugees” may not be a game changer

Ask many Florida Republicans, and they’ll tell you Florida has gotten redder because DeSantis’ famous opposition to COVID-19 restrictions during the pandemic has drawn anti-lockdown Republicans to the state in droves. “The coronavirus policies and Gov. DeSantis implemented during coronavirus are, in my opinion, responsible for the deeper shade of red that Florida is now,” he said. Justin Syveya prominent Republican political consultant in Florida.

The problem with this theory is that Florida’s population was already increasing even before the coronavirus hit. It is true that the pandemic has had a particularly significant impact on Florida: according to American Community Survey estimates674,740 people moved to Florida from a different state or the District of Columbia in 2021, the largest influx of domestic immigrants to any state. But by Florida standards, that wasn’t the case Which unusual. While the rise in 2021 was a larger number than in any year from 2011 to 2019, it was consistent with the general trend of more and more people moving to Florida as the decade went on. Only 73,129 domestic immigrants moved to Florida in 2021 compared to 2019, before the pandemic.

Of course, these newcomers to the Sunshine State may be qualitatively different from their pre-pandemic predecessors: more Republican, more ideologically motivated. Saifee says several recent transplants anecdotally told him they moved to escape COVID-19 restrictions. “The reason they come is because they are political refugees. They are looking for refuge from the politics of their home states.”

But all the old reasons people moved to Florida before the pandemic didn’t disappear overnight, either. We couldn’t find a scientific poll asking people why they moved to Florida, however The Tampa Bay Times put out an open call For answers to this question in 2022, the most common answers were low taxes, affordable housing prices, and good weather. This is consistent with research that finds that most people who move do so for financial, not political, reasons. (Certainly, “cutting taxes” is a political reason for action — but it’s not the reason DeSantis can take credit for, as the state constitution says Prohibited personal income taxes Since 1968.)

A few Tampa Bay Times respondents cited coronavirus restrictions as a reason for their move, so it’s possible that some of the increase in migration from 2019 to 2021 was due to DeSantis’ policies. On the other hand, many respondents also pointed to their new ability to work remotely, which is another possible explanation for the spike in 2021. Overall, it is difficult to say with any confidence that DeSantis’ coronavirus policy caused a large number of people to move to state who otherwise would not have done so, not to mention the influx of new residents that was large enough to change the state’s status. Political formation.

DeSantis has done a lot of party building

DeSantis may have had a greater influence on Florida’s political color by investing in campaign field operations to expand the state’s Republican Party. There are currently 525,418 more Registered Republican voters in Florida than it was at the end of 2018, and some of that growth can be attributed to DeSantis. Shortly after his inauguration in 2019, he directed the state Republican Party to Focus on registering more Republican voters. The Republican Party’s net gain of more than 40,000 voters that year was the largest gain for the party in the year before a presidential election in this century. Then, in 2020, the party added a recent record high of nearly half a million voters on the network. In 2021, DeSantis Contribute $2 million The registration push paid off in November of that year, when the number of registered Republicans soared Finally the number of registered Democrats overtook. Finally, in 2022, in the midst of DeSantis’ re-election campaign, the GOP concluded an impressive four-year run by adding 188,323 Republicans to the rolls on the network. You guessed it: This was the largest number for a midterm year in at least 20 years.

But although DeSantis has been helpful for these efforts, he can’t take full credit. As the chart above shows, Republicans have been closing the registration gap with Democrats for some time — and their efforts have gone into overdrive starting in 2016, two years before DeSantis came on the scene. Former President Donald Trump’s campaign probably deserves credit for the significant increase in Republican registration in both 2016 and 2020.

In their quest to take the lead on party registration, Republicans got the most support from an unexpected source: Democrats. In addition to these 525,418 registered Republicans, Florida also has 299,808 Republicans. less Registered Democrats are lower than they were at the end of 2018 — despite population growth in the state. The Florida Democratic Party has, For years, it was a messAnd they were Unable to invest in this type of enrollment effort Necessary to combat the natural attrition of voter lists. Had the party been able to simply hold steady at the 5,315,954 registered voters it had at the end of 2020, registered Democrats would still outnumber Republicans statewide — despite DeSantis’ best efforts.

And Hispanic voters weren’t swayed just by DeSantis

You also cannot talk about the Republican Party’s recent dominance in Florida without talking about the significant progress it has achieved among Latinos. According to Catalysta Democratic-allied data company that uses voter profile to analyze past elections, Hispanic support for Democrats in Florida declined in 2022. Former Rep. Charlie Crist, the Democrats’ gubernatorial nominee, received just 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. By contrast, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received 66% of the Hispanic vote in the 2016 presidential race. This is a big problem in a country that Population of voting age He is 21 percent Hispanic.

But it’s hard to say that Hispanic voters are moving to the right because of DeSantis. For one thing, the Republican shift began long before the 2022 campaign. In 2020, President Biden received just 50% of the Latino vote in Florida, according to Catalyst, accounting for most of the decline between 2016 and 2022. If anyone deserves credit for this, it’s probably Trump, who… He appealed to Hispanic voters As he seeks to reopen the economy during the pandemic, as well as with Targeted outreach to Florida’s diverse Hispanic communities. Of course, the swing of Latinos to the right is a national phenomenon, not just a Florida phenomenon. Nationally, Hispanic support for Democrats fell from 71% in 2016 to 62% in 2020 and 2022.

However, Latinos did He continues To move toward Republicans between 2020 and 2022 in Florida when they haven’t done so nationally. Maybe it was thanks to DeSantis, or maybe it was because Florida’s Hispanic population is so unique (while most Latinos nationally are Mexican Americans, Florida’s Hispanic community is mostly made up of people of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent and South Americans, who may have different policies). priorities).

Or maybe there was no movement at all, and Republicans ended up with higher support among Latinos in 2022, simply because many Hispanic Democrats in Florida didn’t bother to vote in 2022. According to Florida Democratic data analyst Matthew Isbellthere were 959,980 Latinos registered as Democrats in Florida at the time of the 2022 election, compared to only 728,027 registered as Republicans. But only about a third of these Hispanic Democrats actually voted, compared to more than half of Hispanic Republicans, which means the actual electorate included more Hispanic Republicans than Hispanic Democrats. In other words, much of DeSantis’ success with Latinos in 2022 was due to disparities in turnout.

Florida might not be that red after all

Dig deeper into the 2022 turnout numbers and a bigger problem for DeSantis’ narrative emerges. Much to DeSantis’ success In all fields This is due to the disparity in turnout. Overall, Isbell found that 63.4 percent of registered Republicans in Florida cast ballots in 2022, but only 48.6 percent of registered Democrats did. The turnout gap was 14.8 points Outside the framework of the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections In Florida.

Forget the question of whether DeSantis deserves credit for swinging Florida to the right — it raises the question of how much Florida will swing at all. After all, 2022 was only one election, and history is full of examples of landslide victories in swing states that did not permanently change the political nature of the states. (For example, Nevada, which re-elected then-Republican Governor Brian Sandoval by 47 points in 2014 between voting for then-President Barack Obama by 7 points in 2012 and for Clinton by 2 points in 2016.) There is evidence that Florida has been drifting toward Republicans in recent years, but that trend predates DeSantis, and there was no indication before 2022 that it would become a state where Republicans win by 19 points with any regularity.

Given all the evidence, DeSantis seems more likely to be a strong candidate with a strong political operation than a politician who has radically reshaped Florida politics. Even Saifee, who believes DeSantis helped make Florida somewhat redder, thinks 2022 will be weird. He said DeSantis received extra credit from voters because of his anti-lockdown policies during the pandemic, which future Republican candidates will not benefit from. “That perfect political storm will never happen again.”