CORAL GABLES, Florida — Political punditry cognoscenti let out a collective gasp when, a month out from Election Day 2024, a top-tier polling outfit showed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump set to win Florida by 13 points. Sure, Florida had long ago shed its swing-state status, social media posts and cable television comments declared. But Democrats no doubt would keep their Sunshine State loss limited to a respectable margin in a presidential contest that could go either way.
“I’m skeptical Trump is leading by 13 points in Florida (which he won by only 3.5 points in 2020),” journalist James Surowiecki wrote on X, about the New York Times/Siena survey, hours after its Oct. 8, 2024, publication. The dismissive take by Surowiecki, a contributor to the Atlantic and a former New Yorker staff writer, was typical of the genre.
Then, Trump beat the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, by 13.1 points in Florida, 56.1%-43%.
Trump’s Florida win was broad and deep, with the rightward shift particularly pronounced in previously Democratic areas such as Coral Gables, a coastal city in lower Miami-Dade County that’s home to the University of Miami. Trump in Coral Gables took 50% of the ballots, compared to 49% for Harris. It was a notable move toward the Republican column from 2020 when, in the city of about 50,000 people, President Joe Biden prevailed over Trump 53%-47%.
Trump’s Florida romp helped him cement a second, nonconsecutive White House term in a 312-226 Electoral College win, while also capturing the popular vote with 49.9% to Harris’s 48.4%. The 45th and soon-to-be 47th president’s 2024 Sunshine State rout was a 10-point increase over his 2020 Florida win against Biden — even while losing the White House for what turned out to be four years.
The yawning chasm between political “experts'” expectations for Florida in the Nov. 5, 2024, election and the results reflects Trump’s enduring and still growing popularity in his adopted home state. The New York native but now-Mar-a-Lago resident also embodies the populist-conservative government model that’s emerged in Florida over the past several years and which Trump, in his second presidency, is poised to expand upon or inflict on the nation, depending on your political perspective.
Yet election results are only the start of the Trump-Florida story. It’s playing out in real time amid Trump’s second-term personnel moves as he prepares to reenter the White House on Jan. 20. From Trump’s West Palm Beach perch, he has surrounded himself with Florida folks. That includes incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio, Attorney General-in-waiting Pam Bondi, soon-to-be national security adviser Michael Waltz, and several more.
Consider it Trump’s crew of Florida Men and Women, an egalitarian twist on the Florida Man theme. The phrase originally described Sunshine State characters who engage in unusual or bizarre behavior, yet it’s become a political badge of honor for many Florida Republicans in the Trump era.
Florida was a natural place for Trump to look for talent in staffing his next administration.
“Floridians are very independent,” said Jamie Miller, a former executive director of the Florida Republican Party who has also worked on campaigns in Mississippi, North Carolina, and West Virginia. “We want to live our lives without government interference. It’s in our DNA to try and reduce government regulation.
“The good news is these are highly qualified people,” Miller added. “I think it’s good for the country to see these policies that worked well in Florida.”
Intentionally or not, issues of interest to Floridians will get outsize attention in the coming administration, said Steve Schale, a Democratic consultant based in Tallahassee.
“Understanding things like the space industry, hurricane response, flood issues — having folks who know those issues is very helpful,” Schale said in an interview.
In putting together his new administration, Trump could choose both original supporters and political converts, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida.
“I think Trump believes many of these Florida Republicans are died-in-the-wool MAGA supporters,” Jewett said in an interview. “If not originally, they’ve at least come around to it. Trump moved to the state himself. We know for Trump it’s often about personal relationships. He tends to pick the people he knows and likes.”
Peter Schorsch, a former Sunshine State GOP consultant who now runs the popular Florida Politics website, noted the depth of Florida folks set to join Trump’s second administration. Among them is James Blair, who is set to be White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political, and public affairs, while Taylor Budowich is incoming as White House deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel. Both played major roles in the 2024 Trump presidential campaign. Another Floridian, Tallahassee-based Meredith O’Rourke, was a top fundraiser for the campaign.
Schorsch further cited the selection of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Cabrera to become the next U.S. ambassador to Panama. The usually obscure role, at least in the United States, is taking on heightened importance because Trump, in December 2024, threatened to retake control of the Panama Canal. According to the president-elect, the Central American nation is “ripping off” American ships that pass through the waterway.
“I don’t think it’s a surprise that some of the top-level people are going to D.C.,” Schorsch said in an interview. “What is increasingly surprising to even us here is the second and third round of people joining the administration.”
Cabrera, a son of Cuban exiles, has been a Trump loyalist in Florida Republican politics. The county commission recently passed his proposal to change the name of a 4-mile road in the city of Hialeah, population about 224,000, to President Donald J. Trump Avenue.
“This isn’t like a State Department career service person,” Schorsch said. “It’s surprising when you wake up and see that somebody you just had drinks with or hung in the same social circles with a little while ago is being tasked with a sensitive diplomatic post.”
An increasingly MAGA Florida
Florida has become the epicenter of Trump’s political movement and the state shaping the modern Republican Party. During his first four years out of office, Trump turned Mar-a-Lago into the MAGA mecca. The movement’s top figures made regular pilgrimages there during Trump’s 2017-21 term and after he left the White House.
It coincided with Florida’s populist conservative turn, from the center-right. The shift began in earnest when Trump beat the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, there 49.02%-47.82%. Two years later, Republican Ron DeSantis, at the time a Trump acolyte, narrowly won the Florida governorship. Four years later, DeSantis won reelection by a stunning 19 points despite waves of negative news coverage over his agenda in Tallahassee. Combined with dominant state legislative majorities, Florida looks to be a Republican-dominated state for the foreseeable future.
Florida’s political evolution into an increasingly red fortress was fueled by an influx of conservative-leaning voters. Not just retirees, but newly arrived police officers, firefighters, and other middle-class workers who helped Trump and DeSantis turn a pivotal swing state MAGA red to the point that registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats by 1 million. That’s in a state population of nearly 23 million people — the nation’s third largest and growing.
The Trump team from Florida
Trump’s Florida affinity was clear almost immediately after his win over Harris. Two days later, Trump chose Wiles as White House chief of staff, which will make her the first woman to hold that top administration role.
A daughter of the late NFL player and broadcaster Pat Summerall, Wiles is an experienced Florida political hand who played a key role in guiding Trump’s 2024 comeback presidential win. Friends and political foes alike credit her with instilling relative discipline into Trump’s 2024 campaign operation. She’s earned a reputation among Democrats and Republicans for running a tight ship. She commands respect, and, most importantly, has Trump’s ear, at least to the extent possible with his mercurial campaign and governing style, mixed with an often unorthodox decision-making process.
Because White House chief of staff isn’t a Senate-confirmable position, Wiles can begin work immediately upon Trump’s inauguration at noon on Jan. 20. So can Waltz as the Trump administration’s national security adviser. He’s been a House member since January 2019, representing Florida’s 6th Congressional District, which covers Daytona Beach to Palm Coast and inland areas.
Waltz graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and then was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Waltz earned four Bronze Stars while serving in the Special Forces during multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa. Waltz later was a Pentagon defense policy director and counterterrorism adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. In Congress, Waltz has been a vocal Trump supporter.
Foreign policy in the second Trump administration will get more Florida flavor from Rubio, a Republican senator since 2011, who is expected to win relatively easy confirmation from his Senate colleagues.
Rubio was born in Miami, the son of two immigrants from Cuba. He holds a unique place in the MAGA sphere. As a Trump-defeated rival for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, he is a past political opponent and critic. Still, he has grown close to the incoming president. He’s embraced some of Trump’s more controversial views while steering clear of others.
As a senator, Rubio voted to certify the 2020 election results, even as Trump refused to admit his loss to Biden. But in 2023, Rubio echoed the sentiments of Trump and many MAGA Republicans in a report he released, “‘Diversity Over Diplomacy’ — How Wokeness is Weakening the U.S. State Department.” He argued in the report that the State Department, which he’s now poised to head, gave priority to diversity, equity, and inclusion over building international relationships and protecting America’s national security during the Biden administration.
Rubio won his first Senate race in 2010, the same year as Bondi’s victory for what became two terms and eight years as Florida’s attorney general. Trump picked Bondi for attorney general after his first choice, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration. Gaetz, who represented Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the Pensacola area, was the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation. Republican senators, though loyal to Trump, made clear their opposition to Gaetz amid allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. Gaetz has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Bondi is less a political piñata than Gaetz, yet still a longtime Trump political ally. In March 2016, on the eve of the Republican primary in Florida, she endorsed Trump at a rally, picking him over Rubio, a candidate from her state. During her 2011-19 tenure as attorney general, she tried unsuccessfully to overturn and weaken the Affordable Care Act. As Florida’s top prosecutor, she also stressed human trafficking issues and urged tightening state laws against traffickers.
Bondi critics, or at least skeptics, have a less sanguine view. They see her as a Trump loyalist who will not hesitate to carry out the incoming commander in chief’s push to investigate his enemies. She has vowed repeatedly in television interviews and elsewhere to investigate what she called out-of-control federal prosecutors and FBI agents. She specifically called the prosecutors who charged Trump with crimes members of “the deep state.”
Trump’s Florida picks don’t end there. He tapped Dr. Dave Weldon, a former GOP congressman from Florida’s central Atlantic Coast, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While Weldon is less known, Bondi and Rubio are among the most prominent faces of a conservative political movement in Florida that’s been building for a generation, said Miller, the GOP consultant based in the Sarasota area.
“Republicans have been in complete control of the Florida state government since 1998,” Miller said. “Conservative public policies have proven to be effective here. So, DeSantis had a 20-year foundation to build upon.”
Trump wing men and women in office
Beyond Trump’s Cabinet members and top advisers from Florida, the state’s elected leaders will help with political blocking and tackling. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is a wealthy former healthcare executive and was Florida governor from 2011 to 2019. Scott was first elected to the Senate in 2018 and won reelection by nearly 14 points in 2024. Scott soon made a bid for majority leader, with Republicans set to hold a 53-47 edge over Democrats in the next Congress. Though Scott lost the intraparty race to Sen. John Thune (R-SD), he remains an influential MAGA movement figure, appearing frequently in the media as a Trump surrogate.
Then there’s DeSantis, who, over six years as governor, has turned Florida into a political test kitchen for policies that have become national conservative priorities. He’s led a rightward shift that has stocked the state with ascending GOP talent.
After about five-and-a-half years as a House member representing a central Atlantic Coast district, DeSantis rocketed to the governorship in 2018 on the strength of a Trump endorsement.
Ironically, it was an episode that proved politically costly for Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, that boosted DeSantis’s popularity.
“After we got eight months to a year in the pandemic, he decided to open the state,” said Jewett, the University of Central Florida professor. “Desantis created an environment that appealed to a lot of conservative Republicans,” leading to more in-state migration. To the point that in 2022, Florida was the fastest-growing state for the first time since 1957, per the U.S. Census Bureau.
DeSantis became a political household name with his populist-conservative agenda.
“After the coronavirus pandemic hit, DeSantis became a leading voice for moving past public health restrictions and towards reopening the economy,” according to the 2024 Almanac of American Politics. “DeSantis soon took a hard right turn, initiating culture wars in education, immigration, and abortion, and even taking on one of Florida’s major employers, Disney, for being a ‘woke’ corporation.”
DeSantis unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. For a while, the fight strained their relationship. But like many one-time critics, DeSantis sought to make nice with Trump. It worked well enough that after Trump won the White House, reports emerged that DeSantis could be tapped for defense secretary if the president-elect’s initial pick, decorated Army National Guard veteran-turned-Fox News host Pete Hegseth, couldn’t win Senate confirmation.
Trump’s looming White House return also is a boon to business for a Florida-based lobbying firm that has added clients at a fast clip. Ballard Partners, with close ties to the incoming Trump administration, employs former Florida Reps. Jeff Miller, a Republican, and Robert Wexler, a Democrat.
After Trump’s win, Ballard Partners signed the Anti-Defamation League, B12 Technologies, Constellation Energy, and the National Association of Drug Stores as clients.
The ADL hired Ballard to lobby on “strategies and development of practices and policies to counter the rise of antisemitism in the U.S.” Lobbying disclosure forms also show that for BI2 Technologies, a self-described “biometric intelligence” and identification company, Ballard will lobby for them on “I.R.I.S.- The Inmate Identification and Recognition System.”
As for Constellation Energy, Ballard has been hired to work on “executive and legislative services related to domestic energy policy and tax credits,” while the National Association of Chain Drug Stores has Ballard lobbying on “Lower healthcare costs, pharmacy coverage, and reimbursement issues,” the disclosure forms show.
A swing state no more
Florida has long had an important place in presidential politics, one way or another. It’s been a bellwether in presidential elections since 1928 when Herbert Hoover flipped the state for Republicans after decades of Democratic dominance.
Since then, Florida voters failed to back presidential winners in 1960, 1992, and 2020. Put another way, Florida was so hotly contested between the parties that in the six presidential elections from 1992 to 2012, Democratic nominees won a cumulative 19,635,195 votes while Republican nominees won a combined 19,504,229 votes, making for a 50.2%-49.8% Democratic edge. Team Blue won Florida’s electoral votes — and the White House — in four of six elections.
That’s by far the closest in the nation over that period or any other recent stretch of six presidential elections. It’s similar to the Major League Baseball rivalry between the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals. The National League pair, two of the oldest teams going back to the 1880s, are almost equal, with the Cardinals winning 1,109 regular season games to 1,084 by the Dodgers — a slim 50.6%-49.4% edge.
Florida reached its swing-state peak in 2000. That year’s Republican presidential nominee, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, beat his Democratic rival, then-Vice President Al Gore, by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast, though only after a 36-day legal brawl in a state that proved the presidential tipping point. Bush netted 271 electoral votes, just one more than necessary to claim a majority.
Now, that’s all a political distant memory. Republicans dominate the Florida political scene, with Trump its embodiment.
The 2024 Florida red wave crashed particularly hard in Miami-Dade County, home to about 2.7 million people. Trump won Miami-Dade by 11 points over Harris, who became the first Democratic presidential nominee to lose the county since Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Support for Trump grew across Florida’s most populous county, the seventh-largest by population in the nation. Trump improved his margins from deep-blue Miami Gardens to the conservative stronghold of Hialeah, home to the highest proportion of Cuban and Cuban American residents of any city in the U.S. Overall in Miami-Dade County, he flipped 10 municipalities from blue to red since the last presidential election, including Coral Gables, a Mediterranean-themed planned community most recognizable for the 1926-built Miami Biltmore hotel, with a tower inspired by the medieval Giralda cathedral in Seville, Spain.
Trump flipped the suburbs, too. In 2020, Biden finished 2 points ahead of Trump in Miami-Dade’s vast unincorporated areas outside of municipal limits. Four years later, Trump swamped Harris in the unincorporated areas, home to nearly half of the county’s voters in the 2024 election, with 59% of the vote to the vice president’s 41%.
Still, the Republican hammerlock on Florida politics won’t necessarily last, seasoned Florida political observers contend.
“Republicans have benefited from migration trends,” said Schale, the Democratic consultant. “But these things tend to be just that — trends. There could be another trend in five years that benefits my side. If the Hispanic vote situation gets better for Democrats nationally, and we’re able to claw back some of the noncollege white vote, then Florida gets better for Democrats.”
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For at least the next four years, though, with Trump back in office, national politics will have a strong Florida tinge.
“Florida is having its moment in the sun with so many people staffing the administration,” Jewett said. “Trump has become the first Florida resident to be elected president. I don’t see how you could have more of a Florida influence than that.”