Florida Democrats maintain that the one million-voter gap between active registered Republican and Democratic voters won’t cost them the November election.
Instead, party leaders said they’re looking to the number of Floridians volunteering for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign — 25,000 — as proof Florida can turn blue for the first time since 2012.
“People now — they feel that it is real and that it's possible,” said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa. “There's this pent up hunger for change and optimism and getting things done and serving your neighbors.”
The number of active registered Republican voters rose to 5.3 million earlier this month, according to county elections supervisor data. There are 4.3 million active Democratic voters and more than 3.9 million people in the state who are registered with minor parties or who are not affiliated with a party.
The voter gap is the largest seen for Florida Republicans since the 1980s.
The news of Republicans reaching one million active voters was first reported by Fresh Take Florida, a news service at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications.
In a statement published last week, Florida Democratic Chairwoman Nikki Fried wrote that the Republicans’ lead is a result of voter suppression that “has eliminated millions of Democratic voters from the rolls over the past year, marking them inactive and canceling mail-in-ballots.”
Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that placed more restrictions on mail-in voting and on organizations dedicated to registering third-party voters. The number of active registered voters also decreased last year by almost one million from 10 months prior.
Only active voters, or people who recently voted or have updated their registration, are measured in public data reports. Inactive voters, who can still cast a ballot, are excluded from county-level data.
“I think it's a sad day when efforts have been made in Florida — started under another governor and carried through with this governor — to actually purge voters from rolls,” said former U.S. Rep. Val Demings. “For Democrats, I think over the last decade or so, we have taken some things for granted. We comfortably enjoyed a voter registration lead, and I think we took our eyes off the ball.”
To counter the Republican lead, which also exists within the party’s total registered voters, Castor said Florida Democrats should ignite young voters’ motivation.
“It was obvious that President Biden wasn't generating that kind of enthusiasm among young people,” she said. “Now it's completely changed. I haven't seen this kind of excitement on the ground in many years.”
Still, Castor said the party needs to ensure youth interest in Harris translates to the polls and doesn’t just live on social media. Young people have historically been less likely to vote in elections.
Charles Horowitz — a 21-year-old delegate from Weston who fundraised to get himself to this year’s Democratic National Convention — said young people need to volunteer and organize for the party but, if nothing else, they need to vote.
“People like to sit back and complain about the issues,” he said. “The fact of the matter is if you don't vote then you don't have a voice.”
