Republicans have been certified as the state’s next senator and governor after weeks of election recounts, dashing Democrat hopes of turning the red tide

It took two weeks, several recounts, a cloud of controversy and the resignation of a long-serving elections supervisor – but ultimately the result was just the same as 6 November.

Democrat Bill Nelson concedes Florida Senate seat to Rick Scott Read more

On Tuesday, Republicans Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis were officially certified as Florida’s next senator and governor, respectively, closing out a messy midterm election saga and condemning Sunshine state Democrats to another generation in the political wilderness.

Andrew Gillum, the charismatic and progressive young mayor of Tallahassee, had hoped to ride a blue wave into the Florida governor’s mansion and nix the Democratic party’s 24-year election drought for the state’s top political job.

On his coattails, the incumbent veteran Democratic US senator Bill Nelson, 76, was fancied to extend his 46-year career in public service into a second half-century.

What actually happened, in the words of the Miami-based Democratic party strategist Ben Pollara, was: “We got our asses kicked in Florida.”

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Despite recounts that narrowed both races to razor-thin margins, Gillum failed to attract enough young and minority voters to outweigh the strong rural white vote for the Donald Trump-backed DeSantis, while Scott – the outgoing two-term governor – squeaked home in his third successive statewide election. His final advantage over Nelson of barely 10,000 votes from 8.2m cast was of little consolation to the deflated Democrats.

Nikki Fried’s slim victory over the Republican Matt Caldwell for agriculture commissioner, meanwhile, did give the party their only success in a statewide race, and is significant because she issues Florida’s gun permits, among other responsibilities. But it hardly makes up for the loss of the “big two” races that highlighted once again a wider problem Democrats in the state have been wrestling for decades – motivating low-turnout voters in a key swing state which, in statewide contests at least, seems to swing only one way.

Going back to 2000, if we can figure out a way to screw up an election, we figure it out Ben Pollara

“Going back to 2000, if we can figure out a way to screw up an election, we figure it out,” said Pollara, chief strategist for Fried’s campaign. “This is like an every four years nightmare. We were excited and cautiously hopeful that this year would be different.

“We just simply don’t as Democrats have it in us in the same way as Republicans do to turn out in the midterms.”

When Florida’s Democratic leaders gather this winter, they have much to discuss. Prominent will be an analysis of how an advantage over the Republicans of several hundred thousand registered voters transformed into another deficit at the ballot box.

Of equal concern is that the gap has closed in recent years as more voters turn their backs on the Democrats to become no-party affiliated, indicating disillusionment with the political direction of the party and perhaps a protest at the candidates they have fielded.

“I’ve worried about that. When we closed our campaign in 2008 there was about a 750,000 advantage in registered Democrats to Republicans, and today it’s about half that,” said Steve Schale, director of Barack Obama’s first successful Florida campaign and senior adviser for his re-election in 2012.

“Part of it is the Republican party, the Koch brothers and those guys, they’re organising and registering voters year round. We register voters basically for four months every presidential campaign.

“We are [also] becoming less competitive outside urban and suburban communities, not just in Florida, and the only way to make it up is record turnout in a number of counties.”

Schale believes Florida’s Democrats forgot valuable lessons learned after previous historic defeats. “We had almost the exact same conversation in 2004 when John Kerry lost states like Florida by significant margins to Bush,” he said. “We have to get back to voter registration, investing in staff that go out into communities to build relationships and give us more of a presence.”

Pollara believes the Democratic registration advantage was exaggerated, pointing to areas such as Liberty county in Florida’s Panhandle, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans more than three to one, yet voters preferred DeSantis over Gillum by almost four to one.

“We are just at a continuing demographic disadvantage and even as the state gets blacker and browner, which it certainly has, the whiteness of the state is hardening along the same lines.”

But he agrees that for all Gillum’s undoubted charisma, Florida Democrats dropped the ball in terms of reaching and motivating the very voters the candidate needed, and now face an even trickier route back to relevance.

“We have to rebuild into a longtime functioning party, not dominated by one personality or whoever the presidential nominee is that year.”

Other political observers say the Democrats continue to misjudge the Florida electorate. “They’re older people, they are Cubans who always turn out, and they’re business owners, whereas the Democrats’ coalition is generally people who are less likely to vote, younger people, minorities,” said Charles Cooke, editor of the conservative National Review.

“The consequences are serious … Republicans have had 24 years’ dominance at governor and now DeSantis is about to reverse the supreme court, which is the one thing in Florida that wasn’t right-leaning.

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“The Democratic party at state level is a disaster and they don’t know what the answer is.”

Experts say there is no magic bullet in Amendment 4, the ballot initiative approved by Florida voters that instantly restored voting rights to up to 1.5 million former felons.

“At least half won’t even register, and only about a third who register will vote,” said Darryl Paulson, emeritus professor of government at University of South Florida St Petersburg. “It’s going to have some benefit because the last three governor races and last two presidential races were all decided by 1% or less, but the Democrats should not overstate the impact.”

The nut the Democrats have yet to crack, Paulson believes, is finding the perfect candidate.

“Everyone they’ve run for the last 20 years, white or black, young or old, moderate or progressive, you’ve essentially got the same result, and that’s second place.”