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November, 2019, Florida County Republican Registrations Report and Elections Analysis
©Stephen R. Meyer, Vero Beach, Florida, December, 2019
Issued 12/5/19
There are roughly 47 weeks from the end of November to the early voting period of the 2020 election. In November, Republican registrations relative to Democrat registrations in Florida improved by an impressive 14,832 registrations since the end of October and the deficit now stands at 233,386 (see Table 1). Most of these gains were owing to Broward County, Miami-Dade County and Alachua County updating their voter rolls. Perhaps people are also registering in support of President Trump as a reaction to the impeachment charade. Republican registrations relative to Democrat registrations peaked in the early summer of 2018 at a deficit of 231,962 registrations (see attached chart) and we are once again approaching this level.
It has been another fun year of following Florida high school football teams. What may Republicans learn from successful high school football programs? Most successful football programs have off-season efforts to facilitate their players getting bigger, stronger, faster, and more athletic. When the football season gets underway the team's foundation is solid owing to this off-season effort. Having a pool of bigger, stronger, faster, and more athletic players gives the coaches a competitive advantage. Successful football programs continue to have their players get bigger, stronger, faster, and more athletic during the football season, but the focus shifts to practicing, playing games, and recovering from the physical demands of the sport.
The political equivalent of the football timetable is found in the campaign season and the non-campaign season. Republicans should be becoming politically bigger, stronger, faster and more athletic in non-campaign years so there is a more robust base to build upon once the campaign season kicks in. Republicans should continue to grow their base during campaign seasons but the focus rightly switches to the upcoming election.
On a percentage basis, Florida was the seventh most Republican state in the union in the 1988 presidential election. In 2016 Florida had fallen to being the 27th most Republican state in the union. Given that the presidential elections are national, there must be something in the non-campaign season that Florida Republicans are doing relatively poorly, or that Florida Democrats are doing relatively well, or some combination of the two, for Florida Republicans' market share to have fallen relative to the other states.
What the Democrats have done to grow their base in the off-season, even with long-term Republican control of Florida governorships and legislatures, is to create government programs which promote the building of Democrat habitat (rental housing) while hindering the creation of Republican habitat (owner-occupied housing). An attribute of the Democrats' strategy that is so infuriating is that their non-campaign strategies get implemented as law, so public resources, most of which are supplied by Republicans, are used to grow Democrat market share. The genius of the Democrat strategy is that they have managed to get a significant number (possibly even a majority) of Republicans to actively support the Democrat market share growing policies!
Table 2 deals with registrations trends and vote trends (see attachment). Last month, a new metric was created for a population-neutral comparison of Republican registration efforts at the county level. This month the same idea was applied to the shift in the 2012 and 2016 Republican presidential vote relative to the Democrat vote (see Table 2). The creation of the 2012 to 2016 trend was done for a couple of reasons. The first reason was to demonstrate that the counties where Republicans generally did well in the 2016 presidential election compared to the 2012 presidential election are generally doing well in current registration efforts, and the poor performing counties in the 2012 to 2016 timeframe are generally performing poorly in registering new Republicans. Poor performance is highlighted by low or negative numbers in Table 2.
Housing data (from the Census Bureau's QuickFacts website and shown in Table 2) pertaining to the median home price and the homeownership rates within the counties have been listed for the top 10 performing Florida Counties and for a select group of the ten poorest performing counties (those with poor 2012-2016 Republican vote trends and/or poor Republican registration trends). The highest performing Republican trending counties had an average median home price of $130,400 versus $210,930 for the highest performing Democrat counties. The highest performing Republican counties had an average homeownership rate of 78.3% versus 59.5% for the selection of some of highest performing Democrat counties. It is worth noting that none of the top ten performing counties had a homeownership rate below 70% and the only county of the poorly trending counties with a homeownership rate above 70% was Collier County, a very Republican county, but one that is not trending very well.
Hopefully, Republicans will immediately take advantage of the findings that Republicans generally politically prosper in areas where homes are inexpensive and homeownership rates are high and Democrats generally politically prosper where homes are expensive and homeownership rates are low. Creating Republican habitat is accomplished in a number of ways and this will be addressed more broadly in next month's report.
A somewhat scary finding relating to the poor performing counties is that 58% of Florida's population lives in just eleven Florida Counties (Pinellas, Seminole, Duval, Alachua, Osceola, Leon, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Orange, Miami-Dade, and Broward) that are either heavily Democrat or significantly trending to become more Democrat.
Have a Blessed Holiday Season,
Steve Meyer, Indian River County REC Member
Contact Information, Steve Meyer:
Phone or text: 772-713-8265;
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Joe Saul
Secretary Indian River County REC
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