President Joe Biden (D) visited Florida this week in an attempt to boost Democrat candidates ahead of next week’s midterm election, and it appears to have backfired.
Not only do Republicans now have hundreds of thousands more registered in the state than Democrats, Republicans are also leading the state through early voting and have taken the lead in the state’s largest Democrat stronghold.
ABC News reported that the “number of registered Republicans voting in Miami-Dade County, the state’s most populous and a historically blue stronghold, surpassed Democrats on Wednesday,” which came one day after Biden’s visit.
Republicans are up by 216,302 votes across the state in early voting, a period that usually favors Democrats, and they are now up in Miami-Dade County by more than 1,000 votes.
“Florida is not looking so good for the Democrats. There are fewer registered Democrats who have voted than registered Republicans. That’s really unusual for Florida,” said Michael McDonald, who oversees data analyzed by the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project.
“At this point in time, Republicans have a lead in the early vote, and unless something fundamentally changes in Florida, if we go into Election Day and Republicans are still leading in the early votes, I would say that is all but over for [Charlie] Crist and [Val] Demings’ possibilities of winning their races,” McDonald added.
Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, said that the Republican Party’s expanding dominance in the state is a direct result of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ (R) leadership and policies.
“There’s a couple of key components right to this formula that I think is going to have success on Tuesday. Number one, you have Governor DeSantis and his policies–pro family, pro freedom,” he said. “You have the Republican Party as a whole, our organization every single day–we’ve woken up, but we’ve been focused on voter registration since he’s been in office.”
“We’re a Republican state for the first time in history in terms of more registered Republicans and Democrats,” he added. “Hispanics are rejecting the Democrat Party, and they’re coming over to our side … we’re excited. I think it’s going to be a historic election.”
A recent report from Politico highlighted numerous red flags for Democrats ahead of the midterms, including but not limited to:
- The Democratic Governors Association spent just $685,000 this election cycle. It gave $14 million to Florida in the past two governor races.
- Big outside donor money has almost completely dried up. New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg contributed only $1.5 million to Democrats this cycle. He vowed $100 million to Florida in 2020.
- Polling shows Republicans making headway in Miami-Dade County, which has long been a blue stronghold.
- Democrats have collectively raised $29 million in the four non-federal statewide races. Republicans raised nearly $200 million.
“I think Ron DeSantis will win Miami-Dade County,” said Evan Ross, a longtime South Florida-based Democratic consultant. “Democratic voters are not at all excited or motivated by Charlie’s campaign. Right now, I think it will be close, but I think DeSantis beats Crist here.”
“The only thing that might give Charlie Crist a chance of becoming governor would be DeSantis aggressively campaigning for him over the next two weeks,” Ross said. “Translation: It’s over. And it’s going to be ugly.”