Florida: The Republican Party’s Newest Stronghold

Graphic by Luke Stone (all photos labeled under creative commons license).

Florida was once a national bellwether, but no more. Twenty years ago, George W. Bush’s 537 vote advantage in the state carried him to a razor-thin electoral college victory. As Florida went, so went the nation, and there was no telling how it might move election to election. Everything changed in the Trump era. After pulling off an upset victory in the state in 2016, former President Donald Trump became the first candidate to lose the election and win the Sunshine State since George H.W. Bush in 1992. The past two decades have slowly turned Florida from a toss-up into a budding red state. Now, all signs point to the pendulum swinging even farther to the right in Florida.  Explosive population growth, favorable demographic shifts, and Ron DeSantis’s rising popularity will turn Florida into a new Republican stronghold.

Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the country. In 2014, it passed New York as the third most populous state and hasn’t looked back since, appearing in the top-three of U-Haul’s one-way rental destinations every year since 2016. The COVID-19 pandemic has made Florida an even more attractive destination for relocating Americans. While many states kept businesses closed, Florida was adamant about getting residents back to work and quickly re-opening hotels, resorts, and restaurants because of the state’s reliance on tourism. Public health effectiveness aside, the strategy spurred growth, as the state had a higher growth in new utility customers between March and December of 2020 than any other year of the previous decade. The same report indicated that Florida’s population grew by an additional 1.12 percent in 2020, the 7th highest state population growth rate in the United States.

With the 2020 census completed, Florida’s decades-long growth stands to have significant electoral ramifications. Recent estimates suggest that it will gain two congressional districts after reapportionment and consequently two electoral votes. Given that Florida’s redistricting process is still controlled by the predominantly Republican state legislature, it is likely that districts at all levels will be redrawn to increase the party’s 16-11 advantage in the U.S. House, 24-16 lead in the State Senate, and 78-42 edge in the State House. 

Of course, population booms aren’t always a good thing for Republicans. The demographic context of that growth matters just as much, if not more, than the growth itself. The three largest counties in Florida—Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach—are among its most diverse and are typically among its most reliably blue. But Trump’s presidency seems to have confounded that. Even though the former President rarely posted an approval rating above 50 percent nationally, his 2020 support in Palm Beach County was 2.7 points higher than it was in 2016, 5.3 points higher in Broward County, and a whopping 22.3 points higher in Miami-Dade County. In fact, Trump’s 2020 team “improved the percentage of votes he received in 2016 in all but 18 of Florida’s 67 counties.”

As puzzling as they were, the results indicate that the Trump campaign might have been correct in believing that it would court more Latino voters than it did in 2016. One expert from the University of Central Florida noted that key Latino demographic subsets, such as Puerto Ricans in Osceola County, “tend to be conservative, evangelical voters.” Other subsets, such as Cuban- and Venezuelan-Americans, voted against the Democratic ticket because of the “socialism” label Trump appended to Biden, as justified or unjustified as that might have been. 

The results in Florida mesh with broader national trends, too. Even in a losing effort, the Trump campaign won “tens of thousands of new supporters in predominantly Mexican American communities along the border” in Texas and won a “heavily Latino New Mexico congressional district.” 

In Florida, sustained Latino support for Republicans would be an electoral game changer. Hispanics and Latinos make up 26.4 percent of the Florida population and made up 19 percent of the electorate in 2020 according to exit polls. But instead of breaking 62-35 for Democrats like they did in 2016, they broke just 53-46 for President Biden. It’s no coincidence that the Republican Party’s best recent performance with Latino voters led to one of the most lopsided statewide elections in Florida this century. If Republicans continue to win roughly half of the Latino vote, it will be very difficult for Democrats to assemble a winning coalition in Florida.

Increased Latino support for the GOP is not the only surprising shift taking place in Florida. Pandemic shutdowns up north have brought Wall Street bankers to the Sunshine State, too. Virtu Financial, which brought in “roughly $9.6 million a day” in the third quarter of 2020, announced it was moving 10 percent of its workforce to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Its CEO said that the firm is “oversubscribed” with people who are tired of living in “the tri-state area” and want to move elsewhere, like Florida. During the height of the pandemic, billionaire and Ron DeSantis megadonor, Ken Griffin, relocated the bulk of his Citadel Securities staff to the Four Seasons Hotel in Palm Beach from offices in Chicago and New York. 

The southward shift of the financial sector is so well-known that the Wall Street Journal has not only covered it as a finance story, but also as a real estate story. In February,  the newspaper published a feature with the headline, “As Wall Street Migrates to Florida, Hedge-Funders Move to Offload Manhattan Homes.” Wall Street coming to Florida can only mean good things for Republicans, who typically receive support from the financial industry. The exodus from New York is not entirely pandemic-driven. Forbes covered the story in 2019 and cited “costly living expenses, crumbling infrastructure and high tax rates.” While Florida is becoming more expensive too, it has no state income tax and sizable suburbs that offer ex-Yankees a much-needed change of pace from lengthy commutes on malfunctioning subways. 

Florida’s Republican realignment has its own figurehead in Governor DeSantis. The former Congressman rose to national stardom in 2018 following an unexpected primary win and an even more unexpected victory against Democrat Andrew Gillum in the general election. The early-stage Trump supporter has drawn his own share of backlash since his foray into politics but has still enjoyed strong approval numbers in his home state. Recent polling showed him at a 53-42 percent approval/disapproval ratio among all voters, eight points higher than his mid-July stumble following critiques of his handling of COVID-19.

The Governor has shown national sticking power, as well. In the CPAC 2021 Straw Poll (albeit in Orlando), DeSantis garnered 43 percent of the vote in a mock 2024 primary without former President Trump in the field. The next highest candidate was South Dakota Governor, Kristi Noem, at just 11 percent.

National Republicans will do everything in their power to protect DeSantis during his re-election bid in 2022 because he could very well be “the guy” come 2024. In the process, they’ll be supporting down-ballot Republican candidates and strengthening the GOP’s grip in the state at-large.

A solid red Florida would have national implications. In presidential elections, it would allow the Republicans to effortlessly cash in on 31 electoral votes and focus their efforts on other states in which they’re losing ground, such as Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. In Congress, Republicans could net an additional three or four seats once lines are redrawn and, if the trend continues throughout the decade, possibly seven or eight seats in the long-run. The recent rise in Latino support could increase Latin-American representation within Congress and help the largely white and male GOP become more diverse.

The Florida Republican Party is benefitting from very friendly conditions at present. It managed to withstand three surges in Democratic support in 2008, 2012, and 2018, and it is now poised to carve out insurmountable advantages for the next decade. If the party can capitalize on population growth, redistricting, favorable demographic shifts, and DeSantis’s national prominence, it may become a new breeding ground for national conservative figures and presidential candidates.