According to the latest slew of swing state polling from the Wall Street Journal, President Joe Biden isn’t even on par to win Pennsylvania or Michigan — crucial states he won in 2020 and cannot win the Electoral College in 2024 without — let alone accrue new purple state pickups. That hasn’t stopped his campaign from publicly broadcasting its delusion that the most unpopular president in modern American history can win the electoral behemoth of Florida.
“Make no mistake: Florida is not an easy state to win, but it is a winnable one for President Biden, especially given Trump’s weak, cash-strapped campaign, and serious vulnerabilities within his coalition,” the Biden campaign wrote in a memo, citing a six-week abortion ban which will effectively be on the ballot after a recent state Supreme Court decision.
It is true that according to recent polling, the majority of Floridians will support a ballot measure to enshrine legal abortion access in the state’s constitution. But the even more salient reality is that no national Democrat, much less one presiding over Biden’s abysmal record on both the worst inflationary crisis in 40 years as well as the worst migrant influx in the nation’s history, can overcome the red wave that has engulfed the state.
The GOP’s stranglehold over Florida isn’t just thanks to the personal appeal of the most effective sitting governor in the country, Ron DeSantis, as well as its most famous resident, snowbird and former President Donald Trump. It’s also a raw numbers game.
From Reconstruction onward, Florida has historically been a solidly Democratic state, electing Democrats to the presidency in every election but one from 1880 to the postwar era. Even then, the number of registered Democrats in the state was hundreds of thousands to millions greater than Republicans from as far back as the Department of State publicly records in 1972 — that is, until registered Republican voters outnumbered Democrats for the first time in 2021. In fewer than four years, that margin has expanded to 856,000 registered Republicans, almost 200,000 of whom have registered in the past six months alone.
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Recall that Trump crucially won the state in 2016 by just 100,000 votes and then in the early hours of election night in 2020 by not quite 400,000 votes, or 3 points. Now, Trump is leading Biden in state polling by 6 points even without the inclusion of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is widely regarded as siphoning support away from his fellow Democrat, Biden. Further, Trump has a staggering 17-point lead among Florida’s Hispanics, who similarly helped DeSantis secure his 20-point reelection in 2022.
At this point, Republicans are trending toward a million-voter margin of support over Democrats. That’s not just an insurmountable hindrance for Biden, statistically speaking. It’s also an idiotic pipe dream when considering the reality that the incumbent isn’t even on pace to win the vital states he won last time, let alone convert new localities to the increasingly lost cause of the Biden campaign.