Dems have momentum in Florida. But can they reverse state's MAGA shift?

Recent election cycles have been bleak for Florida Democrats, as the state morphed from key battleground to reliably Republican, but Emily Gregory wasn’t deterred from trying to flip a GOP seat in the state legislature. Gregory believes the “branding” of her native Florida as a red state is overblown, and decided to test her "theory" on the campaign trail.

Gregory, 40, lives in Palm Beach County, the home of President Donald Trump. Once strongly favoring Democrats, the county moved toward Republicans in recent elections, but there are signs the political winds may be shifting again.

In March Gregory won a Palm Beach state House seat that Trump had carried by 11 percentage points, and where his Mar-a-Lago estate is located.

Her takeaway: “Florida was never as red as advertised.”

Gregory isn’t alone. Florida Democrats also flipped a GOP-held state Senate seat in the Tampa area this year, won the Miami mayor’s race for the first time in nearly three decades and claimed another mayoralty long held by Republicans in Boca Raton.

The Democratic victories – and strong performances in other races where they fell short - delivered a jolt of energy to a party that had seemed on the verge of extinction in the Sunshine State, raising the question of whether Florida is edging back toward the center.

A Florida where Democrats can compete in more races could alter the national political landscape, from the midterm battle over control of Congress to the 2028 presidential race.

Yet even as Florida Democrats show momentum, they are facing a new challenge from an old nemesis and other significant hurdles that have political analysts skeptical of their chances of making a big splash this year.

As Gov. Ron DeSantis' final term wraps up and he prepares to leave office in January, he pushed through a new U.S. House map for the state's districts that creates four more GOP-leaning seats. The map, which is being challenged in court, could leave Republicans with 24 out of the state's 28 House seats.

“DeSantis has really squeezed the Democrats and (redistricting) is just the latest example,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election handicapping program at the University of Virginia.

DeSantis departs

The 2026 election marks the end of the DeSantis era in Florida. For Democrats, it can’t come soon enough.

Prohibited by term limits from running again after serving a pair of four-year terms, DeSantis is leaving office as one of the most transformative governors in state history, presiding over a conservative policy blitz and Republican blowouts in the last two election cycles.

Florida once was the nation’s largest swing state, its contested status gripping the country when Republican George W. Bush won it by just 537 votes. After Bush, Democrat Barack Obama won the state twice and then Trump carried Florida three times by increasingly larger margins.

During a particularly tight stretch from 2010 to 2018 every contest for governor and president in Florida was decided by a percentage point or less. DeSantis won his 2018 race by less than half a percentage point after a recount, the closest governor’s race in Florida history.

Yet DeSantis was reelected in a landslide in 2022, winning by 19 percentage points, after attracting national attention during his first four years in office for pushing back on COVID-19 health measures and enacting education policies restricting how LGTBQ and racial issues are discussed in schools. DeSantis tangled with Disney over a measure dubbed the "don't say gay" law by critics and with Black lawmakers over the "stop WOKE Act," which they worried would lead to the whitewashing of African American history.

Florida Democrats are eager to turn the page. They are eyeing the governor's race, the seat held by GOP U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, key U.S. House races and downballot contests.

But Trump won Florida by 13 percentage points in 2024, meaning Democrats would need a massive swing back in their direction to flip a statewide seat.

“The state I think is just objectively redder,” Kondik said.

1.5 million more Republicans

With 23 million people, Florida is the third most populous state thanks to droves of retirees and immigrants. It stretches more than 850 miles from Pensacola to Key West, encompassing communities that variously feel like the rural South, a slice of New York or Wisconsin, or parts of the Caribbean or Latin America.

When DeSantis first was elected governor, registered Democrats still outnumbered registered Republicans in the state. Now there are 1.5 million more Republicans than Democrats in Florida.

Between 2020 and 2024, more than twice as many Republican transplants than Democrats moved to Florida, according to voter and consumer data company L2, as DeSantis touted the state's lack of COVID restrictions and pushed a strongly conservative agenda. A growing Hispanic population has trended more Republican in recent elections.

Democrats historically have relied on the diverse and heavily populated Atlantic Coast from West Palm Beach to Miami to anchor its electoral performance, but both Trump and DeSantis won majority-Hispanic Miami-Dade County in recent elections and DeSantis won Palm Beach County. Trump's win in Miami-Dade was the first for a GOP presidential candidate since 1988.

The rightward shift even in traditional Democratic strongholds has led to big GOP blowouts in statewide contests, including in races where Democrats raised big money and attracted national attention, such as former congresswoman Val Demings 2022 U.S. Senate campaign.

“When you look why we’ve gotten a 1.5 million voter advantage it is because Floridians have rejected the radical Democrat agenda,” said Florida Republican Party Chair Evan Power, who called the state “solidly red.”

Florida Atlantic University political science professor Kevin Wagner said the state leans Republican, but hesitated to call it a deep red.

“Florida is more strongly Republican than it used to be, but it is also large, diverse, expensive to campaign in, and politically dynamic,” he said. “The better description is that Florida has moved from being a swing state to being a state where Republicans begin with a clear structural advantage.”

DeSantis’ new congressional map gives the GOP another advantage, but Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said the map could backfire. To create more GOP districts DeSantis' map “weakens” some of the existing Republican-controlled districts, she said, making them less favorable to the party.

“I think that Ron DeSantis overplayed his hand,” said Fried, the last Democrat to be elected statewide in Florida after she won the job of agriculture commissioner in 2018 and served one four-year term.

'Smart' gerrymander

The new Florida congressional map has seven districts that Trump would have carried by 20 points or more, compared to 11 under the old map, according to an analysis by Democratic consultant Matthew Isbell. But of the 20 seats Republicans currently hold, Trump would've carried all of them by 12 points or more under the new map.

Kondik said it would still take a “mega wave” to put some of the diluted Republican-leaning seats in play. They still strongly favor the GOP.

“They protected their existing seats pretty well,” Kondik said, adding “As gerrymanders go I thought it was a pretty smart map.”

Florida Democrats see hope in their victories and strong performances over the last year.

There were 12 special elections in Florida in 2025 and 2026 to fill vacant legislative and congressional seats. The districts swung towards Democrats by an average of 15 percentage points compared to Trump’s 2024 performance, according to Isbell's analysis.

A 15-point swing in November from Trump’s winning margin would make Democrats competitive up and down the ballot in Florida.

Yet while Florida Democrats' performances in recent races indicate the midterms are shaping up to be more favorable for the party than past elections, they could have trouble replicating what they did in low turnout special elections when voter turnout is likely to be significantly higher in the regular November midterms, Kondik said.

Wagner said the special elections show “Democrats are not extinct in Florida, but they do not prove that Democrats can win statewide.”

To have a shot, Democrats likely need to raise considerable campaign cash, something that’s been a challenge for the party in Florida. National Democratic groups spent little money in the state in 2022 according to memo by the state party chair at the time. And the 2024 presidential race was a sleepy affair in Florida with minimal advertising after both candidates decided to focus their energies elsewhere.

"I think to abandon Florida is really shortsighted," Gregory said.

She believes the state is “firmly purple” and is convinced Democrats can be competitive. After knocking on many doors, she found the issue on the minds of Florida voters is the one that’s resonating nationally: affordability.

'People are exhausted'

Gregory, who owns a fitness business, launched her campaign emphasizing education issues, but adjusted her focus after voters kept telling her about the burden of high property insurance costs.

Democrat Brian Nathan, a union leader who flipped a GOP-held Tampa-area state Senate seat in a March special election, also heard a lot about property insurance and other cost-of-living issues on the campaign trail.

Nathan, 45, said Trump "didn't come up hardly at all" when talking to voters, but actions at the federal level were part of the “undercurrent” in his election. Backlash to the president’s aggressive second term agenda has energized Democrats and helped fuel the party's victories nationwide in off-year and special elections throughout 2025 and 2026.

Yet Nathan and Gregory said they steered clear of mentioning Trump, focusing instead on kitchen-table issues. Florida Democrats often have been dragged into culture war battles by DeSantis and the GOP, but Gregory described herself as "a very centrist, pragmatic voice."

“People are exhausted right now. They just want to know that someone out there is fighting for them and has their best interest at heart,” said Nathan, who won a district Trump carried by seven percentage points despite being badly outspent.

High housing costs have threatened Florida’s status as a relatively inexpensive haven for retirees and service industry workers. Trump’s policies have exacerbated the problem, with the Iran war driving up the price of gasoline and other goods.

“The appetite for change is just so enormous right now,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman turned cable news pundit who is now running for governor as a Democrat.

Polls show a large majority of independent voters, of which there are 3.3 million in Florida, disapprove of Trump.

Florida's large Hispanic population is another political wildcard. Trump greatly improved his performance among Hispanic voters in 2024, but polls show a significant majority disapprove of his performance as president, although he is faring better with Hispanic voters in Florida than nationwide. Many Florida Hispanics from Cuba and South America vote Republican after fleeing socialist or communist dictatorships.

Florida surprise?

While Florida Democrats are eager to prove they can compete, they must first get through the August primary. Jolly's main rival for the Democratic nomination for governor is Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, a former police chief and sheriff and husband of Val Demings.

In the U.S. Senate race, former Trump administration whistleblower Alex Vindman, who was at the center of Trump's first impeachment after testifying about a call the president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is viewed as the frontrunner to take on Moody after raising $8 million to kick off his campaign. He is running in the Democratic primary against state Rep. Angie Nixon.

On the GOP side, Moody is trying to hold onto a seat DeSantis appointed her to last year when Trump plucked former U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio from Florida to serve as secretary of state. Meanwhile, Rep. Byron Donalds is the favorite to secure the party’s nomination for governor after landing Trump’s endorsement.

Polls show Donalds and Moody both ahead against any hypothetical Democratic opponent, and both are expected to be well funded, with plenty of national GOP support.

“I always call Florida Democrats fool's gold," Power said. "They think they have a chance every two years, and every two years we whoop them."

Neither race is attracting much national attention right now. Kondik's organization rates both as strongly favoring the GOP. Whether funding flows to Florida Democrats from the party's national infrastructure likely will depend on the races being close in the final stretch, something Jolly said he's counting on.

"We will move the polls in Florida, and as we move the polls the money will come in," he said.

University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett said that while Republicans are favored statewide in Florida, the strong trend toward Democrats in special elections means it "wouldn't be a shock" if the party pulled off an upset, although the timing would be quite notable.

"If somehow they actually were able to win after Florida has been proclaimed a red state that would be somewhat ironic for sure," he said.