Congratulations to Jackson County for joining the now 47 Florida Counties where the number of Republican registrations outnumber Democrat registrations!
- There were roughly 16 weeks from the end of June to the early voting period of the 2020 election.
- In June, Republican registrations in Florida, relative to Democrat registrations, improved by 4,735 registrations. This leaves the Democrats with a 265,041 relative registration advantage (See attached chart and tables for the details of this and other related items).
The optimal political strategy is not to defeat the opposition, but to reconcile with the opposition on favorable terms. The Democrats and their allies have implemented this strategy in getting people of all political persuasions to join them in transferring the real estate decision making process from the marketplace to government entities. The Democrats and their allies prefer non-elected regional governments, non-elected government agencies, and the courts to regulate the real estate markets.
This strategy has paid huge political dividends for Democrats as they have grown their underlying share of the vote by roughly 0.5% per year, or 2% per presidential election cycle over the last few decades. This has been achieved by decreasing the home ownership rate through raising the cost of ownership while subsidizing both rental housing and rental payments. This has hindered the workings of a historical path of converting Democrat-voting renters into Republican-voting homeowners.
Another Democrat effort is the pushing of the idea of "white privilege". Whites have generally been privileged, but the privilege is associated with property ownership, something the Democrats have always worked diligently against minorities achieving. From the elimination of Field Order 15, which granted 40 acres of land to newly freed slaves (rescinded when Lincoln's Democrat Vice President Andrew Johnson ascended to the presidency following Lincoln's assassination), to the redlining of real estate markets (begun by FDR), to the destruction of minority homeownership with the creation of high-rise rental units in the so-called war on poverty (LBJ), all have been Democrat efforts leading to the lessening of the ability of minorities to become homeowners.
This lack of homeownership is correlated with recent rioting. The following highlights the poor homeownership rates in many of our riot torn cities: Atlanta-43.4%, Cleveland-41.3%, Dallas-41.2%, District of Columbia-41.8%, Los Angeles-36.8%, Miami-29.8%, Minneapolis-47.3%, New York-32.7%, Raleigh-51.5%, and Salt Lake City-48.4%.
Singapore has a world-class homeownership rate of 90%. We should try to emulate their success in our large cities.
The political implications of this ownership/rental phenomenon may be observed in Florida voter registrations. Low home prices and high rates of homeownership favor Republicans. The top and bottom ten counties in relative registrations are listed in Table 4 in the attachment and summarized as follows;
- The ten most Republican-trending Florida Counties in regards to registration following the 2018 election had an average median home value of $143,610 and a homeownership rate of 75.9%.
- The ten most Democrat-trending Florida Counties in regards to registrations following the 2018 election had an average median home value of $213,250 and a homeownership rate of 59.1%.
One last item of concern in the recent rioting: the defunding of police departments has been generally scoffed at by those on the right. For Democrats and their allies, defunding the police may not be as crazy as it seems. Areas without legal law enforcement will find this duty filled by extralegal entities. This situation already exists in areas of Detroit and Minneapolis may not be too far behind. The socio-economic repercussions of this defunding are not good for America and therefore are not good politically for Republicans.
Have a great Fourth!
Best,
Steve Meyer, Indian River County REC Member
Contact Information:
Phone or text; 772-713-8265
