Republicans in Florida now have about 1 million more active voters than the Democratic Party, a historic milestone as the GOP continues to extend its edge in voter registrations.
There are 5.3 million active voters registered as Republicans compared with the Democratic Party’s 4.3 million, according to county-level data aggregated by Fresh Take Florida. More than 3.9 million people are registered with minor parties or have no party affiliation.
Evan Power, the chairperson of the Republican Party of Florida, touted the advantage and attributed the gains to the efforts of volunteers to register voters and the work of elected officials to “make Florida the beacon of freedom.”
But Florida Democratic Party executive director Phillip Jerez said in a statement that while Republicans “take victory laps on the voter registration gap,” the totals were misleading as they excluded inactive voters.
Voter registration reports don’t include all the people registered to vote, instead only including active voters who have recently cast a ballot or communicated with a local elections official. Registered voters who have done neither risk being labeled inactive. Inactive voters are excluded from public data on voter numbers but are still eligible to vote.
If inactive voters are included in totals, Republicans have a smaller but still substantial advantage over Democrats. According to a July voter registration report, Republicans had about 960,000 more active voters than Democrats.
But the advantage dropped to about 700,000 when counting all registered voters.
Still, Republicans are making meaningful gains in voter registration. So far this year, nearly 130,000 new Florida voters have registered as Republicans, double the number of new Democratic registrations, according to state voter data.
A 2022 bill making changes to elections law contributed to a surge in the portion of voters statewide designated as inactive. SB 524 requires county elections supervisors to reach out more frequently and proactively to voters who haven’t voted or been in touch with elections officials. If the supervisor’s office doesn’t hear from these voters, they could be moved to the inactive list.
While the change affects people in any party, political observers said it affected Democrats more. This is in part because lower Democratic turnout in the 2022 elections compared to Republicans meant a larger portion of them had a longer gap since their last vote, according to Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida.
Additionally, a 2023 measure added stricter rules and larger penalties for third-party voter registration organizations. Local groups have said the changes have led them to register fewer people to vote.
As of July, about 10,700 people have registered to vote through the support of third-party organizations this year. That’s about one-fourth of the number of people who registered via third-party groups in the same time period in 2020.
A drop in third-party voter registrations likely disproportionately affects people of color, who tend to rely more heavily on these groups to register to vote, said Abdelilah Skhir, a policy strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. State voter data shows that people of color are more likely to be registered as Democrats than Republicans.
McDonald said that the Republican voter advantage in Florida is meaningful and gives Democrats an uphill climb in the upcoming elections.
But he said that the balance of registered voters in Florida could change ahead of the November election, noting increased enthusiasm among Democrats over Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy. He also said Democrats could receive a bump in registrations among younger residents registering to vote for the first time.
McDonald also noted that the impact of the registration gap could be reduced at the ballot box by voters with no party affiliation. He said these voters, who make up 26% of Florida voters, also tend to lean Democratic as they are more likely to be younger and people of color. This could mean that even though Democrats trail the Republicans in registration, the impact of the imbalance may be smaller once left-leaning voters with no party affiliation are taken into account.
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Tampa Bay Times
