Florida is trending increasingly Republican. The 2020 presidential election proved that, and the midterm elections only reinforced this trend. The Sunshine State now has 30 electoral votes, which is third in the country, so both candidates have it in their sights. However, Donald Trump appears headed for a comfortable victory.
According to the latest Emerson College poll, the Republican would beat Joe Biden by more than ten percentage points, which would be the largest gap between the two candidates since 1988, when George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by 22 points.
The poll was conducted April 9-10 with a sample of 1,000 registered voters, and it showed that Trump had 51% voting intention and Biden 38%, with 11% undecided. However, if the option chosen by the latter group is added, Trump's victory would be 56% to 44%.
FLORIDA POLL
2024 Presidential Election
51% Trump
38% Biden
11% undecidedWith undecided push:
56% Trump
44% Bidenhttps://t.co/FwsKYA2Agx pic.twitter.com/WXZ9lyNBCU— Emerson College Polling (@EmersonPolling) April 11, 2024
Among those who leaned toward the current White House tenant, 32% did so because they dislike Trump, 14% because they support their party's candidate, 19% because of a particular issue and only 24% because they really like Biden.
Conversely, among Trump voters, 16% choose him because they dislike the Democrat, 31% because of a specific issue, 14% because they support their party's candidate and 28% because they like the Republican.
Florida is getting closer and closer to being a red state
The 2022 election was a hinge for Florida's electoral trend. DeSantis won a landslide victory in his re-election bid, achieving the most significant margin of victory since 1982. Along the way, he flipped counties that had not been red in years, such as Miami-Dade, Osceola, Pinellas, St. Lucia, Hillsborough and Palm Beach, which had not been red since 1986.
Marco Rubio, now on Trump's list to be vice president, also did the same in the Senate elections, where he beat Val Demings by 16 points, almost doubling the 2016 margin.
These numbers came against the backdrop of an exponential Republican surge in Florida, which materialized very recently and with immediate electoral impacts.
At the end of 2021, a piece of news shook the entire political arc in the United States. At that time, POLITICO informed its readers that Florida was officially a red state, given that the GOP had achieved something that not long ago was unthinkable: surpassing Democrats in number of votes, at that time, by 6,035 people.
The trend continued in 2022 when, according to Sun Sentinel data, Florida had 5.28 million Republicans registered for the midterm elections, 86,376 more than in August of that same year. On the flip side, Democrats went to the polls with 4.97 million registered voters, although from August to November, they only added 9,380 new members.
