After a year of campaigning in her bid to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Democratic challenger Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) defined in one nine-word Nov. 6 Twitter post what it will take to win Nov. 8.
“This election will come down to one thing: turnout,” she wrote.
The problem for Demings and fellow Democrats is the GOP has more voters to turn out in the rapidly reddening Sunshine State and early voting figures indicate Republicans are, indeed, turning out.
In November 2021, just three years after Democrats had a 260,000 advantage in registered voters statewide, the number of enrolled Republicans voters exceeded those of Democrats for the first time in Florida history.
Exactly one year later, that 6,035 GOP voter registration edge has grown to more than 300,000, according to voter registration numbers published Nov. 1 by the Florida Secretary of State Office’s Division of Elections.
The overall number of registered Florida voters for the midterm election has declined since the 2020 general election by nearly 40,000—14.5 million to 14.46 million—which is typical for non-presidential election voter registration numbers.
But despite the dip in overall registered voters since 2020, Florida Republicans over that span have added nearly 45,000 to their voting rolls, while Democrats have nearly 300,000 fewer registered voters in their ranks than two years ago.
Amid these diverging trends is the sustained growth in non-affiliated voters in Florida as well as across the nation. There were more than 3.8 million unaffiliated voters in 2020 and nearly 4 millio on Nov. 1, 2022.
It is the turnout among this bloc of voters, roughly 30 percent of Florida’s total electorate, that Demings must induce to defeat the favored Rubio on Nov. 8.
Unaffiliated voters, however, tend to vote along conservative lines, only without the ideological pretense of party partisans. They also tend to be more influenced by unfolding events and those concerns, reflected in polls across Florida and the nation, are overwhelmingly about the economy, the economy, and yes, the economy.
Rubio has pounded away at Demings as a supporter of President Joe Biden’s policies that he and other Republicans say are responsible for a 40-year-high in inflation.
While Rubio is telling voters the he’ll lead the way to lowering the costs of gas and groceries, Demings has been campaigning on expanding health care, abortion, and on the “danger to Democracy” Rubio poses as a Trump backer.
At a Nov. 7 Orlando block party, Demings said the messaging is sinking in and Democrats will show up when it counts—as will unaffiliated voters who want a course change in Florida priorities.
“We are going to use our intellect, our mouths, our feet, our courage, our passion and get to the polls and change Florida and change America,” Demings said.
She said women in Florida will be the difference with many unsettled by the fallout from the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Rubio’s campaign is in last-lap auto drive with the senator stumping and glad-handing from place-to-place emphasizing the enthusiasm he is seeing among supporters while touting a red wave in 2022.
All signs appear to vindicate that enthusiasm.
As of Nov. 6, the Florida Division of Elections reported nearly 4.6 million voters have already cast their midterm ballots with Republicans enthused by what they believe the numbers portend. Early in-person voting ends statewide on Nov. 6.
Of 4.3 million requested vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots, 2.5 million have been returned. As expected, Democrats have returned the most, more than 1 million, about 140,000 more than the number of mail ballots returned by GOP registered voters.
There are nearly 820,000 mail ballots requested by Democrats that had not been returned as of Nov. 6, compared to 525,000 for Republicans and 475,000 not yet returned by unaffiliated voters. Thus far, unaffiliated voters have returned nearly 470,000 VBM ballots,
While Republicans are keeping pace in the VBM category, which Democrats usually dominate, GOP voters cast nearly 500,000 more early in-person ballots than Democrats.
