Florida County Republican Registrations Report — October 2023

Note: The registrations numbers in this writing refer to active registrations, a subset of total registrations.

Florida Republicans continue the trend of making relative gains in voter registrations as Republican registrations relative to Democrat registrations increased by 49,749 registrations in October and by 350,267 registrations since the book closing for the 2022 general election. Florida Republicans now have a 656,217 relative registrations advantage over the Democrats. Republican registrations were 37.87% of total registrations and Republicans now enjoy a 4.81% of total registrations advantage over the Democrats (click here to see tables).

The Democrats lost 88,798 additional registrations in October, 458,151 registrations since the 2022 book closing, and 790,076 registrations since the 2020 election. The Republican registrations decreased by 39,049 in October, and the number of registrations which are neither Republican nor Democrat decreased by 105,621 registrations in October (click here to view charts).

Note: There have been some relatively large shrinkages in the number of registrations in Florida Counties. The law was changed to make it easier to shift voters into the inactive voter category, a category where the process of removing voters from the voter rolls is initiated. The decreases in the number of registrations should end when the supervisors of elections complete the job of making the transfers in accordance with the new measures.

The 2023 Election Results

There was one county where the October registrations numbers were not available until after the 2023 general election, so this section of this report was added owing to the delay. Many of the points made in this section of this report are repeated in the following sections, but in the interest of time, these sections were not rewritten.

The Republican election performance in 2023, especially given that the Democrats are governing so horrendously, was generally viewed as being underwhelming. In a chain of emails, a quote attributed to John Solomon, in a discussion with Steve Bannon, best sums up why Republicans have had general underwhelming election results (excluding the great state of Florida) in 2018, 2020, 2022, and now 2023. Mr. Solomon asserted that “elections depend on a simple yet potent formula: candidates, messaging, money and voter turnout.” Mr. Solomon’s view is a great summation of how the Republican political class both thinks and acts.

The overriding determinant in elections is demographics, not the four fore mentioned items! If the demographics are generally neutral, then the factors presented by Mr. Solomon come into play. There are only a hand-full of states where the demographics are neutral. The relative election outcomes of the states, based on demographics, is mostly known for the 2024 election.

Demographics may be broken down into changeable demographics and non-changeable demographics. There is nothing that can be done about non-changeable demographics, such as gender and race, so only changeable demographics need to be addressed.

Of the changeable demographics, the Democrat favoring demographics are those who rent their housing, those who are single, those in non-essential government employment, and those who rely on government for their general welfare. These Democrat demographics could be grouped as those who are alienated from our socio-economic system.

Republicans, in their inability to recognize the importance of demographics, have ceded much of the political playing field to the Democrats. This is most readily seen in our large population centers, where Democrat policy efforts have made the Republicans a mostly non-entity.

Hopefully, the Republican political class wakes up to the reality of demographics before we lose our Republic. So engrained is this Republican mindset, that prayer may be the only workable solution to the Republican political class soon waking up to the reality of demographics.

The Republican Party of Florida’s Take on Voter Registrations

Christian Ziegler, the Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, issued an October mid-month note concerning the Democrats’ $1 million statewide voter registration effort which took place in August. He was happy to report that, from the recent voter registration numbers, the Democrat registrations effort appears to be a failure. This registrations report concurs with the Chairman’s conclusion that the Democrat registrations effort was a failure.

The Democrat registrations effort in Florida was doomed to failure.  Most register to vote when they have a change of address requiring the issuance of a new driver’s license. The Democrats asking non-Democrats to reregister as Democrats require a lot more than money. Since President Biden took office, Florida’s Democrat registrations have been in freefall. If the president remains in office, the expectation is that this negative Democrat registration trend will continue.

In 2018, Governor DeSantis owed his election victory to Miami-Dade County and nearly all of President Trump’s Florida vote gains in 2020 over those of 2016 were captured in Miami-Dade County. This report had previously credited two hurricanes and earthquakes in Puerto Rico (in 2017 an indirect hit by Hurricane Irma, a category five hurricane, and two weeks later a direct hit by hurricane Maria, a category four hurricane, followed by a series of earthquakes and aftershocks in Puerto Rico which are still occasionally happening) which drove, and is still driving, many of the propertied class of Puerto Rico to Florida. Propertied people tend to vote Republican, so Florida Republicans gained politically at Puerto Rico’s misfortune.

Of note is also the elimination of the Florida Department of Community Affairs that took place in late 2011. The Department of Community Affairs was the enforcement arm of Florida’s so-called smart growth law. Republicans have been gaining market share in Florida since this department was dissolved!

Florida experienced a Republican wave election in 2022. Other states were not blessed by an influx of new Republican voters from Puerto Rico, so the expected Republican wave election did not take place nationally. This should have served as a wake-up call for the 2024 election.

The Republican 2024 Presidential Primary—A Waste of Misallocated Resources

Election results are driven by the quality of the candidate and the associated campaign, and the underlying political orientation of a given electorate (electorates in this case being the states).

Assuming the 2024 presidential election is mostly a repeat of the 2020 presidential election, it is known that Republicans need to win three of the five states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to win the presidency in 2024. Republicans have generally done nothing to change the underlying political orientation in any of these states! Republican resources are being wasted by pitting Republicans against one another in primary campaign efforts and not being put to better use in efforts to improve the underlying political orientation of the fore mentioned states.

Perhaps not being Joe Biden will be enough for the Republican nominee to win in 2024, but why isn’t the Republican Party growing those changeable demographics that tend to vote Republican while simultaneously shrinking those changeable demographics that tend to vote Democrat, especially in the five fore mentioned states? If Republican policy makers are not striving to proportionately shrink the numbers of singles, renters, and non-essential government workers, then they are aiding and abetting the Democrats.

Republicans have done nothing to purposely grow the numbers in the changeable demographics that tend to vote Republican. Democrats continue their decades-long efforts to grow the numbers in those demographics that tend to vote Democrat. Owing to this lack of Republican strategy, it will be imperative that the Republican nominee is able to persuade the alienated voter, a significant Democrat favoring demographic, to not vote, or ideally, to vote for the Republican nominee! This is a tall order.

©2023. Steve Meyer. All rights reserved.

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