Ron DeSantis Probably Didn't Turn Florida Red ~ 538

[corbe]

Ron DeSantis Probably Didn't Turn Florida Red

The state was already changing in big ways before he was elected governor.
By Nathaniel Rakich

SEP. 11, 2023, AT 2:34 PM

In his presidential campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pitched himself as a transformational leader who has reshaped the politics of his home state. His 2022 reelection by 19 percentage points “was not just a big victory,” he has argued. “It was really a fundamental realignment of Florida from being a swing state to being a red state.” And most political analysis agrees that the Sunshine State, once known for its impossibly close elections, is now a comfortably Republican-leaning state.

But it’s unclear how much credit DeSantis himself deserves for this shift — or if it even counts as a realignment at all. The most prominent argument in his favor, that Republicans have moved to the state thanks to his COVID-19 policies, is hard to prove. His investment in the state GOP appears to have paid real dividends, but several other factors contributed to that push’s success. He probably didn’t have much to do with another one of Florida Republicans’ biggest accomplishments over the past few years: their inroads with Hispanic voters.

And finally, there’s considerable doubt over whether DeSantis’s premise — that Florida will continue to be a safe Republican state going forward — is even correct. The data suggests DeSantis’s 2022 rout was a historical outlier, driven by a massive partisan turnout gap, and it’s unwise to make sweeping pronouncements based on just one election.

‘Political refugees’ might not be such a game-changer
Ask many Florida Republicans, and they’ll tell you Florida has gotten redder because DeSantis’s famous opposition to COVID-19 restrictions during the pandemic drew anti-lockdown Republicans to the state in droves. “COVID, and Gov. DeSantis’s policies that were implemented during COVID, is in my view responsible for the deeper shade of red that Florida has now become,” said Justin Sayfie, a prominent Florida Republican political consultant.

The problem with this theory is that Florida’s population was already expanding even before COVID-19 hit. It’s true that the pandemic had a particularly big impact on Florida: According to American Community Survey estimates, 674,740 people moved to Florida from a different state or the District of Columbia in 2021, the biggest influx of domestic migrants into any state.1 But by Florida’s standards, it wasn’t that unusual. While the 2021 uptick was a bigger number than any year from 2011 to 2019, it was consistent with the general trend of more and more people moving to Florida as the decade wore on. And only 73,129 more domestic migrants moved to Florida in 2021 than in 2019, before the pandemic.

<..snip..>

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ron-desantis-probably-didnt-turn-florida-red/

[corbe]

  Thought I'd bury this here so Trumpers can't ever accuse me of NEVER posting any Negative DeSantis Threads.

   How hard it must have been for them to deny the Hispanic Vote made a h3ll of a difference.

[cato potatoe]

The influence of DeSantis has not been exaggerated.  As governor he marketed the state as a haven for right-wingers.  Congressmen, state legislators, the CFO, Ag Commissioner, and Attorney General survived tight races in 2018.  But then a ton of new deal democrats were succeeded by political refugees.  This is borne out in the voter registration statistics.  Hispanics realigned because they saw bold and competent leadership.