Rod Thomson

Florida gained more residents, i.e. voters, than any other state in the Union, continuing a trend of Florida growing as fast or faster than the two states larger than it — California and Texas.

Florida was the fourth fastest growing by percentage, but the three states ahead of it are much smaller (Nevada, Idaho and Arizona.) Florida gained 133,000 new residents last year, putting its population at 21.3 million, leaving New York in the dust with 19.5 million — losing 48,000 residents last year.

More importantly, however, is who these people are: primarily older, white voters from high-tax, high-regulation states such as Illinois and New York, but most heavily weighted from the conservative Midwest. That trend greatly favors Republicans in Florida and overwhelmed the influx of Puerto Ricans after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

In fact, this new element suggests the demographic trends may have made a difference in the close 2018 midterms where Republicans squeaked out another victory for Governor and actually flipped the U.S. Senate seat during an election that saw an otherwise pretty blue wave for Democrats.

Not surprisingly, most of the mainstream media got the Census analysis totally wrong for Florida, because they could only view it through get-Trump animosity. Newsweek, for instance, wrote this tellingly dumb sentence in a piece entitled “Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election hopes may be threatened by population surges in key states, census data suggests.”

“Florida trails both Arizona and Nevada in terms of population growth, but it did have more U.S. residents move there than any other state over the past year.”

Of course the most elemental understanding of math and elections tells you that percentages do not matter in this case. Raw numbers are what constitute votes, and more importantly in presidential elections, electoral votes.

Politico reporter Marc Caputo, formerly of the Miami Herald and no conservative but pretty astute on Florida politics, tweeted out this insightful series of analyses:

Support The Truth

“More US residents moved to Florida (133k) than to any other state in the past year. To the degree they were white retirees (esp from high-tax/high-regulation states) , the influx helped the FL GOP win Nov. 6 and could help Trump in 2020 repeat his 2nd win in his 2nd home state

Lol. The same types of folks who said Florida Dems were sure to win in 2018 because of the Boricua Wave of Hurricane Maria evacuees are now sure of a new silver bullet: the passage of Amendment 4!



Former felons will save the day!

But the reality is FL’s Dem coalition (registered Ds & young, black, Hispanic & poor voters) have bad turnout rates compared to the GOP base, which is largely white & old. It’s why the GOP (which has fewer registered voters than Ds) ultimately dominates here: their voters vote @ higher rates.”

Outgoing Florida GOP Chairman Blaise Ingoglia told Politico, “The more older, whiter voters who move here from higher-tax, higher-regulation states, the more we win.”

Matt Isbell, a Florida Democratic analyst, basically agreed with Ingoglia: “We’ve been getting a ton of migration from the Midwest especially, and a lot of them fit the profile of Republican voters.”

Puerto Ricans who moved to Florida over the past year either did not register or did not vote, as their numbers didn’t show up in the midterms. Isbell said the trend of older, white Midwestern voters is “balancing out the growth with Democrats.”

It gets even more interesting moving forward.

Florida is by far the largest battleground state, flipping back and forth from going for Bush to going for Obama to going for Trump (obvious trend here: whence goes Florida goes the national election) with 29 electoral votes. California has 55 electoral votes and Texas has 38, but those are largely uncontested states.

A new Census will be conducted in 2020 that will reapportion electoral votes for the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election. And analyses are generally finding that Florida will pick up at least one and possibly two electoral votes, bringing its total to 31. Texas could get two more also. Oregon, Colorado and Arizona could pick up a seat.

Meanwhile, it looks like uncontested blue states such as New York, Illinois and Minnesota, plus normally blue states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, along with swing state Ohio, could all end losing electoral votes after 2020. Even California may lose a seat in Congress for the first time in its history.

All of this means the electoral challenge will be different in 2020 than in 2016, and very different in 2024. But Florida, the key state for either party, looks like it will be leaning more red.

Rod Thomson is an author, TV talking head and former journalist, and is Founder of The Revolutionary Act. Rod is co-host of Right Talk America With Julio and Rod on the Salem Radio Network.

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