The numbers out of Florida Tuesday are the kind of thing that keeps establishment consultants awake at 3 a.m. reaching for the antacids.
Fresh Take Florida’s live tally showed 425,887 Republicans showing up to vote on Election Day compared to 188,890 Democrats. That is a 236,997-vote shellacking before you even factor in early voting, where the GOP piled on another 143,000-vote cushion. Add it all together and Republicans are ahead by more than 293,000 ballots. They account for 49.75 percent of all voters. Democrats sit at 38.83. Independents trail at 11.42.
This is not a glitch. This is not a polling error. This is a bloodletting.
Registered Republicans in Florida now outnumber registered Democrats by more than 1.5 million voters. Let that sink in. A state that used to be the poster child for “too close to call” is now a state where the Democratic Party cannot even get people off the couch in August. Back in November 2021, Republicans edged past Democrats in registrations for the first time in state history, and the gap has done nothing but widen since. The media called it a trend. I call it a mass awakening.
The only category where Democrats still lead is vote-by-mail, 549,656 to 461,155. Funny how that works. The party that spent four years screaming about “threats to democracy” still leans hardest on the method where nobody can watch who is actually dropping the ballot in the box. I am not saying anything is crooked. I am saying the party that trusts mail more than showing up in person is the same party that fought tooth and nail to keep ballot harvesting legal during COVID. You connect the dots.
Dougtone (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsThe marquee race is the governor’s primary. Ron DeSantis is term-limited out, and Trump-endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds is the man to beat. Donalds has led in poll after poll, and the likely November opponent is David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who switched teams because the swamp pays better on the other side. Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday morning: “Florida, Vote for Byron Donalds for Governor. He has my Complete and total Endorsement.” He called Donalds a “TOTAL WINNER” and said he would work closely with him on the America First agenda. The energy is real. The turnout proves it.
Here is what the experts will not tell you. Florida did not flip red because of some demographic formula or because of one charismatic governor. It flipped because regular people got tired of being told that their concerns about open borders, crime, and boys in girls’ sports were “extremist.” They got tired of being lectured by people who have never worked a real job. They watched the media, the public health bureaucrats, and the whole expert class sell them a bill of goods for four years, and they decided to stop voting for the people who enabled it.
The Democratic Party in Florida is not losing because of bad messaging. It is losing because the product is rotten. You can rebrand a dead horse all you want. It still is not going to run.
Every time the establishment tries to tell you the tide is turning, look at the raw numbers. Nearly 300,000 votes ahead in a primary. 1.5 million more registered voters. The people who built this country are showing up, and the people who have been running it into the ground are finally running out of customers.