Of the approximately 1.2 million more voters registered this cycle than during the last 2018 midterms, nearly 596,000 registered Republican compared to just under 27,000 who registered as Democrats, padding an already wide lead in registered voters first achieved in September 2021.
The numbers reported this week are also a stark reversal from the peak of Florida Democrats’ power in the blue wave of 2018, where the number of registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by nearly 340,000, according to the state’s Division of Elections. Today, Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 300,000 voters, a disparity seemingly helped by voters registering as nonpartisan at a rate 16 times higher than they did Democrat over the past two years.
There was also the removal of several hundred thousand names from the voter rolls since 2018—some of whom may not have re-registered this cycle, prompting some to question whether the Democratic base is simply not electing to register with a party. Or at all.
“We are studying voter purges and tracking voter registration,” Andrea Mercado, executive director of the progressive activist group Florida Rising, told the Miami Herald earlier this fall. “We know there’s over 4 million Black and Latino people and young people in the state who are eligible to vote but are not registered.”
While a January Gallup poll found independents make up an estimated 42 percent of the American electorate, only about one-quarter of Florida’s electorate was registered nonpartisan at the close of books in October.
It’s also not an isolated trend. In Iowa, Republican voter registration surpassed both Democrats and independents for the first time in years ahead of the 2020 elections. Today, Democrats in the state count 80,000 fewer registered voters than they did in that year’s elections, while Republicans have more or less recuperated their losses.
And in March, the number of unaffiliated voters in North Carolina overtook the number of registered Democrats amid anemic registration counts, joining other traditionally blue states like Nevada, Colorado and Oregon. Kentucky also saw its Democratic advantage dissipate this past year.
If Republicans turn out—and independents turn away from voting Democratic—the 2022 midterms have the potential to turn ugly for Democrats as Republicans remain favored to win a majority in Congress this cycle.
According to numbers compiled by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics in July, Republicans made voter registration gains over Democrats in 19 states since the 2018 midterm cycle, while Democrats made gains over Republicans in a dozen states as well as the District of Columbia. In several states, the gain was largely attributed to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which led to a sizable rise in the number of women registering to vote.
While Republicans have seen bright spots, the total number of Democrats still exceeds Republicans in 17 states that saw partisan growth this year, compared to just 14 for Republicans.
