In Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats for the first time ever — and by a whopping six digits.
It’s one thing to look at the polls, which are admittedly impressive. As my friend and colleague Matt Margolis wrote earlier on Thursday, DeSantis is basically unbeatable going into his 2022 reelection effort:
Against Rep. Charlie Crist, the state’s former governor, DeSantis wins 49.2% to 32.8%, with 18% undecided. DeSantis is also beating Florida state senator Annette Taddeo 48.6% to 29.6%, with 21.8% undecided.
In addition, DeSantis scores an approval rating of 58.8% in the poll.
It’s one very easy thing to tell a pollster that, sure, you approve of the governor who avoided most of the COVID madness and signed popular legislation to prevent grown adults from engaging in frank sex talk with second-graders.
It’s quite another, more difficult thing, to get registered to vote with a particular party or even change your lifelong party affiliation.
But that’s exactly what residents of Ron DeSantis’ Florida are doing — and in numbers too big to ignore.
A March surge of GOP registrations has widened the party’s lead, first won just last year. A spokesperson for the DeSantis campaign told Fox News this week that the surge in GOP registrations gives Republicans an advantage of over 101,000 voters.
When DeSantis was first sworn in back in 2019, Democrats led by 255,000. That’s a massive swing. Republican registrations have outpaced Democrats by more than 350,000 in just 29 months.
This might be unprecedented.
It isn’t all good news for the GOP. Some of it is bad news for Democrats.
Despite Florida’s massive population growth, last year the number of registered Dems actually shrank to 5,080,697 from 5,315,954.
I’d add that 2021 was the year that the COVID fever finally snapped across most of the country, and when most of the country could no longer deny Presidentish Joe Biden’s incompetence and incoherence.
But most of the credit must go to the man at the top of the Florida GOP and the top of Florida’s executive branch: Ron DeSantis.
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DeSantis has turned Florida into a safe space for conservative values. That was true during the COVID hysteria, and particularly now during the pro-grooming madness taking hold of everything from elementary schools to the massive Walt Disney Company.
With missteps so minor that I can’t recall a single one, DeSantis has proven to be a hyper-effective mix of two other Republican leaders — without their weaknesses.
The first is former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. During his two terms in office, Walker showed a particular genius for going after the corrupt financial roots of Leftist power.
What a shame that during his all-too-brief 2016 presidential campaign, he lacked that same killer instinct for party primary politics.
The other is former President Donald Trump, whose unrelenting courage and energy made “He fights!” the measure for every GOP candidate who followed in his wake.
Trump’s fatal flaw — 2020 election shenanigans notwithstanding — was his sometimes … questionable … taste in hirelings and taking celebrity medical spokesmodel Anthony “Doctor” Fauci at his word in the first weeks of the pandemic.
Imagine, if you will, an election year without shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, massive unemployment, trillions in new debt, and all the rest.
On second thought, don’t imagine it — it’s too painful.
DeSantis has, so far, proven far more disciplined than Trump.
But the DeSantis combination of Trumpian guts and Walker-like long-range planning has led to a sort of trickle-down effect for Florida Republicans.
The onetime swing state is now solidly red, with every statewide office but one in GOP hands. The DeSantis effect is so powerful that it’s trickled all the way down to the state’s voters, where Dem support has cratered while GOP support skyrockets.
I don’t pretend to know what, if any, plans DeSantis has for national office or whether Trump will attempt the Mother of All Comebacks.
But “Make America Florida” would make a helluva campaign slogan in 2024 or 2028.
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