It’s a celebration 176 years in the making for Florida Republicans, outnumbering registered Florida Democrats.
The Republican Party of Florida made that claim based on internal data.
Florida GOP Chairman Sen. Joe Gruters told Newsmax that the official totals likely won’t be made public until the Florida Division of Elections releases the new numbers in December.
Still, Gruters said, “According to our numbers internally, we think that we’ve unofficially passed the Democrats.”
Sp to the National Conference of State Legislatures on Friday in Tampa, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis broke the news.
“When I got elected governor, we had 280,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state of Florida. Today, and it will probably be fully publicized very soon, for the first time in the history of Florida we have overtaken Democrats. There are more registered Republicans in Florida than Democrats,” said DeSantis.
DeSantis joked that Republicans likely could have ousted Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in New Jersey on Tuesday, if it hadn’t been for all the Republicans leaving that state.
Although Floridians have elected GOP governors in the past, it was not until 1998 that Republicans took over the Legislature as well. The party has controlled that and the governor’s mansion ever since.
Yet until now, among registered voters, Democrats held the lead, even though the ranks of unaffiliated and minor-party voters have grown in recent years, illustrating dissatisfaction with both major parties.
Helen Aguirre Ferré, executive director of the Florida Republican Party, told the Tampa Bay Times that DeSantis deserves much of the credit for drawing newcomers into the GOP. Yet she believes Democrats’ have helped as well, with messaging that has led voters, especially
Hispanics, to believe the party is gravitating more toward socialism.
“The level of enthusiasm in support of registering Republicans is unprecedented, and this is a true milestone moment in Florida’s history,” she told the Times.
The news about the new Republican plurality among registered voters came a day after Politico reported the Democratic Governors Association will pass on providing “significant” financial aid to help their candidate unseat DeSantis next year.
The DGA had spent roughly $15 million over the last two elections for governor. But now, as one Democratic official told Politico, “DGA does not look at things in a vacuum. We have a lot of races in 2022, and Florida requires, what, $6 to $10 million? That’s a lot.”
The news about voter registration also comes as Republicans feel uplifted by Glenn Youngkin’s stunning upset in the Virginia gubernatorial election, and nearly taking out Murphy in New Jersey on Tuesday.
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