• The Republican Party of Florida scandal provides a perfect opportunity for Republicans to adopt additional political strategies focused on positively changing the underlying political orientations of election districts.
• These strategies are critical to the survival of our Republic!
• Republican registrations relative to Democrat registrations in Florida increased by 76,687 in December and now stands at 769,355.
• Table 2 is a new addition to this monthly report. The intent of this table is to show which counties are doing a relatively better job of growing Republican Registrations.
• The situations where Florida’s closed primaries are open to all voters, and when and how these elections determine who obtains the office, should be clarified on Supervisor of Elections websites!

Next Month’s Preview

The Federal Reserves’ 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) found the net worth of homeowner households was $396,200 versus $10,400 for those households who rent their housing! Often pointed out in this registrations report is that the most important changeable Democrat demographics are those voters who are alienated and those voters who rent their housing. With household wealth that is less than 3% of that of their homeowner countrymen, is there any doubt that renters and the alienated voters are often one in the same?

An Opportunity to Enhance the Sub-Optimal Republican Political Strategy of Relying on Campaigns

The political strategy of never letting a crisis go to waste could bring some good from the recent scandal involving the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF). It requires existing Republican leadership to rebuff the less than adequate Republican strategy of being a campaign-only organization.

The Republican Party is stuck on the outdated strategy of counting on campaigns and their four strategic pillars (candidate, money, message, turnout) to win elections. Republicans need change! Choosing Republican political leadership is unfortunately not market driven, nor data driven.

The existing Florida Republican political class, which by its nature will resist change, will choose the new party leadership! There will wrongly be a contest between those who champion what is best for the Trump wing of the party, the DeSantis wing, the Scott wing, the Rubio wing, the Bush wing, etc. The decision of who will lead the RPOF should be based on who can successfully integrate strategies which will improve the underlying political orientations of the state and its various election districts for the good of all Republican candidates at all levels of government!

Sides on who shall lead the RPOF are already being taken. The side that should be taken, siding with those who wish to grow the underlying political orientation of Florida election districts to become more Republican, is not even a thought. Open-minded Republicans should watch the movie Moneyball. Substitute the Oakland A’s manager’s strategy of putting a winning line-up together with the more expansive political strategy of improving the underlying political orientation of election districts. Further substitute current Republican strategy with the then existing strategy norms of professional baseball. This may help in the understanding of the resistance to change that takes place in organizations such as the RPOF.

Democrats, and their allies, work feverishly to change the underlying political orientations of election districts. The results of the Democrat efforts are that our major metropolitan centers have become Republican deserts, socio-economic nightmares, and a huge threat to The Constitution.

The national popular presidential election vote has not been won by the Republicans, and the electoral college vote won only once, since 2004. In California, a state which is a harbinger of national trends, the Democrats dominate as the California national congressional delegation has 40 of 52 members who are Democrat. It is safe to say that California Republican strategies are inadequate! It is also safe to say that California Republicans are like Republicans of other states!

To simplify, Republicans have lost political market share as Republicans voters are aging out of the system and generally being replaced by Democrat voters! Current trends suggest that Republican relevance will soon end, and end abruptly, if Republicans keep limiting themselves to campaigning. Despite general failure, the Republicans keep on keeping on with their limited and outdated strategies!

There is no way to parse Florida election data and find that Republicans strategies are up to the task of regaining ground on the Democrats. Starting with the 1984 presidential election and combining the Perot vote with Republican vote in 1992, and 1996, gives the following Republican percentages of the presidential vote in Florida: 1984-65.32%, 1988-60.87%, 1992-58.82%, 1996-51.44%, 2000-48.85%, 2004-52.10%, 2008-48.10%, 2012-49.03%, 2016-48.60%, and in 2020-51.11%. From these numbers it is readily seen that Democrats made huge gains in Florida between 1984 and 1996 and that the losses have not been recaptured to any great extent.

Recent Republican political gains in Florida are mostly the result of an influx of Republican voters caused by natural disasters in Puerto Rico, new voters who found ways to leave places such as Venezuela, and by Republican voters fleeing Democrat dominated areas within the United States. Florida is unquestionably a desired destination, but being better than New York, Illinois, or California is not a high hurdle to overcome. We should be making Florida even better!

Stating the obvious, Republicans win elections where there are more Republican voters than Democrat voters. There are fewer and fewer of those places outside of Florida!

Ideally, campaigns should be the responsibility of the candidates. Improving the underlying political orientations of election districts should be the focus of the Republican National Committee, the Republican Party of Florida, and the Florida Republican Executive Committees.

Florida is currently dominated by Republicans. Even with this domination, Florida has a primary system which is highly unfavorable to conservative Republicans and highly favorable for Republicans who will readily adopt policies that change the underlying political orientation of election districts to favor the Democrats!

To add efforts to improve the underlying political orientations of election districts to the existing Republican status quo of campaigning may be the last hope to save our great nation. Pray that the Republican leadership of Florida is up to the task. Please work determinedly to make sure the changes in the scope of Republican strategies suggested here are adopted!

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 76,687 registrations in December and by 463,405 registrations since the book closing for the 2022 general election. Florida Republicans now have a 769,355 relative registrations advantage over the Democrats. Republican registrations were 38.47% of total registrations and Republicans now enjoy a 5.76% of total registrations advantage over the Democrats (click here to see tables).

The Democrats lost 93,279 additional registrations in December, 602,564 registrations since the 2022 book closing, and 934,489 registrations since the 2020 election. The Republican registrations decreased by 16,592 in December, and the number of registrations which are neither Republican nor Democrat decreased by 67,612 registrations in December (click here to see chart). Most of the changes in December came from Broward County (click here to see the note).

Note: There have been some relatively large shrinkages in the number of registrations in Florida Counties. The law was changed to make it easier to shift voters into the inactive voter category, a category where the process of removing voters from the voter rolls is initiated. The decreases in the number of registrations should end when the supervisors of elections complete the job of making the transfers in accordance with the new measures.

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 level! The only current option is for conservative Republicans is to vote in the primary! Conservatives, do the responsible thing and vote in the primary!

Supervisor of Election Note on Primaries

Most, perhaps all, supervisor of elections (SOEs) websites state that Florida is a closed primary state. This is not always the case. The SOE of Indian River County (Leslie Swan, who I wish to publicly thank) added the following wording to clarify the situation on the Indian River County Supervisor of Elections website.

“However, there are times when all registered voters can vote in a primary election, regardless of which major or minor political party they are registered or even if they are registered without a specific party affiliation:

If all the candidates for an office have the same party affiliation and the winner of the primary election will not face any opposition in the general election (i.e. no write-in candidates have qualified), then all registered voters can vote for any of the candidates for that office in the primary election.

If races for nonpartisan (i.e. free from party affiliation) judicial and school board offices, nonpartisan special districts or local referendum questions are on the primary election ballot, then all registered voters, including those without party affiliation are entitled to vote those races on the ballot.

At a general election, all registered voters receive the same ballot and may vote for any candidate or question on the ballot. If there are write-in candidates who have qualified for a particular office, a space will be left on the ballot where their name can be written.”

It should be noted that in these special situation primary elections, the candidate garnering the most votes in the primary often wins the office without having to face the voters in the general election.

Not having to win a general election to capture a seat is a huge problem for conservative Republican candidates and it disenfranchises conservative Republican voters, and it needs to be changed!

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