‘Voter registration meltdown’: Democrats losing edge in Miami-Dade as Republicans gain
Back when Florida was the nation’s premier political battleground, Democrats in the state had hundreds of thousands more registered voters than Republicans and a fairly simple formula for competing in presidential contests: run up the score in key metro areas like Miami-Dade County, and try to manage losses in the vast rural and exurban areas that stretch from the Panhandle to the Everglades.
But a statewide surge in GOP voter registration gave Republicans an edge over Democrats for the first time and foreshadowed Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 19-point victory in November. Democrats are rapidly losing their advantage in Miami-Dade, perhaps their most important market in Florida.
Just in the last four years, the number of registered Democrats in the county decreased by over 6,000 voters, and their advantage over registered Republicans was almost cut in half, dropping from a 15-point lead in August 2019 to eight in July 2023, according to a Miami Herald analysis of state voter registration data. Democrats had around 138,000 more registered voters than Republicans in Miami-Dade.
The shift has Democrats concerned about the party’s ability to stay relevant in 2024, when voters will cast ballots in the presidential election and local races. Party leaders are scrambling to make changes.
“There’s no way for Democrats to win statewide in Florida by having a voter registration meltdown in Miami-Dade County,” said Fernand Amandi, managing partner of the Miami-based political strategy and polling firm Bendixen & Amandi. “Democrats are now registering as Republicans and Republicans are out-hustling Democrats in the most important county in the state for Democrats.”
READ MORE: Florida Democrats to inject $1 million in voter registration push
The Florida Democratic Party on Wednesday acknowledged its struggles, announcing that it intends to spend $1 million over the remainder of the year to register more Democrats, with a special focus on Miami-Dade County, where voters will also cast ballots for county mayor, sheriff and other local races next year.
“This type of investment so far outside of the traditional campaign cycle is exactly what the state party should be doing,” said Robert Dempster, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. “It shows that they understand the need to move to a year round organizing model and is a huge step in the right direction.”
Democratic Party leaders and strategists largely agree that their decline in numbers is a symptom of a years-long failure of leadership and organization within both the county and state party, but acknowledge stronger Republican organizing has also played a role.
“The Democratic Party in Miami-Dade is not actually doing the work at the level that needs to be done to reverse the losses of the last eight years,” Amandi said. “The million-dollar voter registration effort is a promising first step, but by itself comes nowhere near to what needs to be done.”
Nikki Fried, who has been the chair of the Florida Democratic Party since February, said the party plans to overhaul the way it has handled voter registration in the state by adding a new position to direct registration efforts. The new voter registration program director will start in August, Fried said.
“For way too long, Democrats have farmed out voter registration to third-party groups,” she said. Rather than using third-party groups, which are nonpartisan, Fried said she intends to handle voter registration efforts in-house so the “partisan conversations” stay within the party.
Florida Numbers
While Miami-Dade arguably represents one of the party’s biggest problems, as 10% of registered voters live in the county, Democrats are losing statewide. The percentage of total voters registered as Democrats has decreased in every single county in Florida since 2019.
In August 2019, registered Democrats — including active and inactive voters — outnumbered Republicans by 2 percentage points statewide. Republicans, who had been making gains in their voter registration efforts for years, in 2021 surpassed Democrats for the first time in Florida history. By September 2022, Republicans were ahead by more than one percentage point.
As of July, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by two-and-a-half percentage points. Around 5.65 million people were registered as Republicans and almost 5.3 million voters were registered as Democrats, according to the most recently available state data. Another 4.7 million people were registered as having no party affiliation (NPA) or with other third parties.
Republican leaders attributed the success in gaining on Democrats to their organizing efforts.
“It’s not a blip,” said Armando Ibarra, president of Miami Young Republicans. “It really is a continuation of a pattern and is a result of work that comes from a long-term perspective. We’ve been working this over time. And 2022, I think, was a culmination of what’s been a long but dedicated and consistent effort to engage with voters.”
At the same time, voters who aren’t affiliated with any party have also seen a rise. In all but two counties, the percentage of voters who were registered NPA increased between August 2019 and July 2023.
In Miami-Dade, the number of voters registered with no party affiliation rose two percentage points since 2019.
Theories abound for why so many voters are registering to vote without party affiliation in a state that shuts those voters out of primary elections. Some attribute the rise to the prevalence of third-party voter registration organizations, which are nonpartisan and can’t legally push new voters to register with a specific political party. Others look to the number of voters native to countries where two-party systems aren’t the norm.
Thomas Kennedy, a Democratic National Committee member who works with immigration advocacy nonprofits, sees rising NPA voter numbers as a sign of political apathy.
“I think there’s a lot of people out there in the zeitgeist that are just unmotivated by the state of our politics, and uninspired, and that drives them either to disengagement from the Democratic Party or to just straight up political apathy. They may choose to represent that by registering as a no party affiliation.”
The Latino vote and looking ahead
Locally, there are high stakes, with state legislative and congressional races on the ballot, as well as one of the Florida Democratic Party’s most prominent elected officials, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who will be seeking reelection in 2024, which is also a presidential election year.
Also next year, the county will for the first time elect a supervisor of elections, sheriff and tax collector due to a 2018 statewide voter referendum that required those offices be elected rather than appointed by the county mayor.
The fight for Miami-Dade County — a majority-Hispanic region where more than half the population was born in another country — also speaks directly to the parties’ efforts to win over Latino voters.
Ibarra, who is Cuban American, says the Republican gains in Miami-Dade can also be attributed to growing support from Hispanic voters. The Republican Party has also invested in courting new arrivals to Miami from other countries, in some cases recruiting Hispanic voters to identify with the GOP even before they’ve become citizens.
“One of the drivers of the gains of the [Republican] party in Miami-Dade County has been the move to the right by Cuban, Venezuelan, Colombian and Nicaraguan voters. They move to the right in large part because we engage with them on issues regarding freedom and democracy and human rights in those countries, which are really important issues to them,” Ibarra said.
Seeking to avoid another 2022 where Miami-Dade flipped red, Democrats are focused on rehabilitating the party’s brand, which they say has been tarnished by Republicans appealing to Hispanic voters because of their trauma with leftist governments in their native countries.
“People don’t like to be on the losing team,” said Kennedy. “It’s difficult to maintain enthusiasm for a team that’s just constantly getting defeated.”
