January 2024 Florida County Republican Registrations Report
- Congratulations to St. Lucie County for joining the now 56 Florida Counties where registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats.
- The following items need to be implemented.
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- Moratorium on the building of rental housing unless county-wide homeownership rates are greater than 85%.
- Change Florida election laws so the winner of a primary election is only granted the office with a corresponding win in the general election.
- In reference to the immediate prior bullet points, please undertake efforts to grow the Republican base through building less rental housing and eliminating the anti-conservative Republican measure of allowing elections to be decided in open primaries held in August.
- Republican registrations relative to Democrat registrations in Florida increased by 48,397 in January and now stands at an 817,752 Republican registration advantage.
- The loss of Florida House District 35 to the Democrats in a January special election was further affirmation that Republicans tend to only vote in general elections. The election result was not a sign of renewed Democrat vigor.
Republican Strategies
Thousands of Republican candidates and office holders possess their own version of Republicanism. The Republican Party is often viewed as an entity, but it is a loosely associated collection of many individual candidates. Candidates, dictated by the immediacy of elections, deal in short time horizons.
Political success is mostly owing to the underlying political orientation of electorates, which is mostly a function of demographics. Demographic change is relatively slow.
The Republican Party, being a collection of individual candidates with short-term time horizons imposed by the nature of elections, campaign efforts do little or nothing to improve the most significant election determinant which are the demographics of the electorate. This has led to huge market share losses by Republicans in our major population centers in the past few decades as unfavorable demographic changes have tremendously hurt Republicans as they, being a collection of candidates, have no long-term demographic related strategies!
Since the Republican party, being a loosely connected groups of candidates, is made up of those surviving Republicans whose electorates are still Republican enough for them to win, they are generally unaware of their predicament and see no reason for change. For instance, the California congressional delegation consists of forty Democrats and only twelve Republicans, but the California Republicans still rely on 1980s era election strategies based on campaigning. How might these losses be reversed?
It is easy to prescribe a workable solution. The Democrats have grown market share by inhibiting Democrat voters from forming families and purchasing their housing. The Republican strategy prescription is to adopt policies that lower the rentership rate and promote family formation.
The Democrats have long used rental housing to grow their market share as renters are much more Democrat than are homeowners. Democrat success has been accomplished by using the phrasing of “affordable housing”. Republicans, for political reasons, should never use this phrase. Republicans using the term “affordable housing” dig their own political graves! The opposition has made their “affordable housing” effort a political juggernaut. Republicans need to counter this with “affordable homeownership” efforts.
$396,200 versus $10,400
Since the 2004 election, Republican presidential candidates have been unable to capture the national popular vote. It is hard to maintain a constitutional republic without the political support from a clear majority of the voters.
Campaigning against Democrats is at best a poor way to grow the relative number of Republican voters. Campaigning against fellow Republicans in the presidential primary season most likely inhibits growth in the relative numbers of Republican voters as Republican candidates use scarce resources to attack one another.
Republicans should be determining who, or what, grows the Republican base during the primary season, or for that matter, any season. Instead, Republicans campaign. Republican prospects in 2024 are improving, but the relative improvement is mostly owing to disillusioned Democrat voters abandoning their party’s current leadership. The disillusioned Democrat voters are generally not becoming Republicans. It is a huge threat to Republican prospects If Democrats figure out a way to induce these disgruntled Democrats to vote.
The Democrats and their allies work tirelessly to create alienated voters. They create alienated voters by undermining families and family formation, and by making it difficult for people of average means to own their housing.
The Federal Reserves’ 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances may shed some light on why renters are alienated and mostly Democrat voters. The survey found the net worth of homeowning households was $396,200 versus a modest $10,400 for those households who rent their housing!
Homeownership is more attainable for those who marry. A lower rate of marriage, household wealth of renters being less than 3% of that of their homeowner countrymen, and with a growing rentership rate, is there any doubt as to why the Republicans have not recently won the nation’s popular vote, have won only one recent Electoral College vote, and who may now face daunting election prospects if the Democrats ever field a candidate who is able to capture the disillusioned voters of the Democrats?
Correlation Does not Prove Causation
Since the vote is secret, it is impossible to claim causation in vote related matters. Since causation is unprovable, polices favorable to the creation of Republican voters are stymied. To get over this hurdle, Republican strategist need to work with provable information. Registrations are generally available public information in Florida. Addresses may then be analyzed for political affiliation.
A contention made in these reports is that rental housing is detrimental to Republican political fortunes. This contention is based on reviewing how voters who own their housing are registered versus how voters who rent their housing are registered. In all bulk analyses comparing the registrations of owners versus renters, those who rent their housing are much more likely to be registered as something other than Republican.
The building of rental housing is therefore a provable detriment to Republican registrations! To increase the percentage of registered Republicans, decrease the relative numbers of rental units permitted and constructed!
Florida House District 35 (HD 35) Special Election
There was much undeserved hoopla from the Democrats concerning HD 35 flipping from Republican to Democrat in a January 2024 special election. Special elections and primary elections are not Republican fortes.
In the 2022 HD 35 general election, there were over 59,000 votes cast with the Republican candidate winning by over 6,000 votes. In the 2024 special election there were a little over 22,000 votes cast with the Democrat candidate winning by 590 votes. Headlines dealing with the HD 35 election should have stated “Low Turnout Propels Democrat Candidate to Victory”. The miserable Republican turnout demonstrates the relative weakness of the Republican Party!
Democrats have proven to be good at capturing primary and special elections owing to many Democrat voters, such as those voters who are government employees, have a personal and vested interest in electing candidates who will personally benefit the voter.
Republicans should make certain that as many elections as possible are held at the time of the general election. Offices should never be granted at the primary level. Why Republicans, who have super majorities in both the state house and senate, allow elections to be decided at the primary election is likely because it would otherwise create a level playing field from a system that now strongly favors moderate/liberal Republicans. The current system also favors those Republicans who are only Republican because they cannot win running as Democrats.
Florida Voter Registrations
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 active voter registrations as Republican registrations relative to Democrat registrations increased by 48,397 registrations in January and by 511,802 registrations since the book closing for the 2022 general election. Florida Republicans now have an 817,752 relative registrations advantage over the Democrats. Republican registrations were 38.65% of total registrations and Republicans now enjoy a 6.11% of total registrations advantage over the Democrats (see tables).
The Democrats lost 15,668 additional registrations in January, 618,232 registrations since the 2022 book closing, and 950,157 registrations since the 2020 election. The Republican registrations increased by 32,729 in January, and the number of registrations which are neither Republican nor Democrat increased by 4,069 registrations in January (see chart).
Note: Please make plans to vote in the Florida non-presidential primary election in August. These primary elections are deadly for conservative Republicans. In the name of fairness, the system should be changed so multi-candidate, single party elections are decided at the general election and not at the primary election! The only current option is for conservative Republicans is to vote in the August primary!
Copyright 2024. Steve Meyer. All rights reserved.
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