Issue #149: Can Florida Democrats Flip HD35 on Tuesday

The Election that Ron DeSantis delayed

This will be a major week in Florida politics. Tonight, Monday the 15th, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to get absolutely bodied by Donald Trump in the Iowa caucuses. If the polls prove correct, DeSantis will likely do 20-30 points worse than Trump, and may indeed come in third behind Nikki Haley.

Come Tuesday, Florida news stories will be dominated by the results from Iowa and a potential concession by the Governor. However, that is not the only big news for the week in Florida. On Tuesday, voters in central Florida will be going to the polls for a special election.

Ron’s Delayed Special Election for HD35

Tuesday is the last day for voting in HD35, a state house seat covering eastern Orange and Osceola counties. The seat is being vacated by Republican Fred Hawkins, who has taken a job as the head of South Florida State College. The seat has been seen instantly as a tossup special election, with the seat backing Joe Biden by 5% in 2020.

Now while this district looks big, I cannot stress enough how much Orange County dominates the vote. Over 80% of the vote comes from Orange, with the Osceola portions largely empty land. This vote density map better highlights the partisan nature of the district and where votes are clustered.

While the seat covers plenty of GOP rural land, its base in the eastern Orlando region; an area with consistent growth and increasing Democratic support, makes it an ideal Democratic gain. However, the district, like the rest of Florida, lurched to the right in 2022, voting for the GOP ticket by wide margins.

The GOP dominance in 2022, however, is heavily driven by the lopsided turnout dynamics in the district. The 2022 votes cast were GOP +6, an unheard of level in recent memory. The GOP turnout advantage was 13%.

This lopsided turnout is something I covered in previous substacks. You can read more about it here - my final turnout report for 2022.

The 2022 results stand out compared to the broad trend in the district, which has been moving to the left of the state over time.

That trend is why, despite the HD35 vacancy coming in the summer of 2023, the special was not schedule till now. I wrote about this at the time, but to me it seems clear that DeSantis scheduled this election until AFTER Iowa on purpose. I wrote about that here.

I delve into my reasoning in the above post, but two vacancies emerged at the same time, a Trump +17 seat in Miami-Dade, and the Biden +5 seat we are discussing here. Well Miami-Dade’s HD118 got scheduled for December, but HD35 got January. It is very clear DeSantis was fine with holding a special before Iowa in a seat the GOP would surely hold. A flip could give DeSantis bad press before the caucuses.

Granted at that point in their decision making, DeSantis’ campaign wasn’t already a fiery mess doomed for failure. Also that HD118 special saw Democrats overperform there, only losing by 6%. I wrote about that special election here.

Back to HD35, it seems very clear that the DeSantis camp didn’t want to risk any bad press from a seat flip. After all, considering the trendline for the seat and it already being Biden +5, it would require bad turnout to not have a real shot at flipping the seat. So, with the special election on Tuesday, what has been done to avoid a repeat of that turnout issue from 2022?

The Campaign for HD35

Once the special election for HD35 became official, candidates began filing in rapid order for the seat. Both parties had primaries. For Republicans, the candidate they wanted the most was Erika Booth, a school board member for Osceola County. She would win her primary. Democrats, meanwhile, had a contested three-way contest that was won by Tom Keen, a navy veteran and former candidate. Keen beat out Rishi Bagga, who’d narrowly defeated him in the 2022 primary to take on Hawkins, and Marucci Guzman.

The election has seen a tremendous amount of resources poured into the district. Financials show a GOP financial lead, which is is to be expected. However, unofficial reports (and so much money is hard to trace) put Democratic spending over $1.2 million, with the GOP perhaps around $1.5. Exact figures may be hard to come by, but the ranges being reported show significant investment on all sides. For democrats, however, the GOP money advantage will always be a problem.

Democrats have responded to this money issue with a massive GOTV effort. Door knocking, phone banking, and mass-texting have been a nonstop part of the Democratic operation in the last several weeks.

Democrats have focused much of their messaging on the state’s property insurance crisis as well as abortion rights in Florida. Republican attacks on Keen have tried to paint him as a far-leftist. However, Keen in recent weeks has been attacked by a “progressive” committee that claims he is actually a conservative and agrees with things like the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

This, however, is a dirty trick. First off, the claims are completely false, as Keen has full LGBT support and has attacked the legislation. The committee “Florida Committee for Progressive Values” was only recently set up and was created by a Republican operative. This is 100% dirty tricks that brings back memories of the Ghost Candidate scandal from 2020 - which saw GOP operatives work to direct leftist votes to fake NPA candidates. Read some backstory on there here.

Both parties clearly want to take the seat. The dirty tricks by the GOP tells me they are worried about a loss here.

How Turnout Looks

So with all the money and messaging going into this race, how is the turnout looking? Well as of the end of Sunday, Democrats hold a 4.5% lead in votes cast.

Democrats have managed to not only hold a narrow lead with in-person early votes, but have a strong vote by mail return rate. Orange, the largest vote block by far, is solidly Democratic, while the rural Osceola portion is as red as expected.

As early voting went on though the last week, Democrats continued to build their lead by increasing the vote by mail returns. Starting on January 6th, the GOP had a near 5% lead in return rate. However, Democrats chased down their ballots and now the gap is less than 1%.

This consistent shrinking of the partisan return gap well reflects the Democratic field operation on the ground. The party has dispatched field leaders who are well known for their tenacity - and as I see it - these results speak for themselves.

Orange GOP Chair Erin Huntley even told Politico Florida

“They are definitely working really hard,” she said of Democrats. “They are definitely fighting for it.” (source)

So no one can claim there isn’t an aggressive play for the seat being made.

Here is a more thorough look at turnout by party and race - though this is a bit behind Sunday. Turnout in the district is right around 10% so far, with Democrats having slightly higher turnout than the GOP.

NPA turnout, predictably, is way down. Specials like this tend to favor the hardened partisans, and NPA turnout often lags massively when its not a regular election (and even then). Both parties right now are heavily focused on getting their partisans out. You don’t see the resources going into NPA voters. As a result, despite this being a seat that is plurality NPA, it will be dominated by hardened Republicans and Democrats.

Now, as I will discuss more in a minute, recent vote history indicates election day should lean GOP to some degree. If this race ends with Republicans having a higher turnout %, I would not be surprised. Keep in mind 2020 saw a GOP turnout advantage of 4%. That said, Democrats want to be leading like they are now, as it gives them a buffer.

The racial makeup of the vote so far is heavily white, much more so than registration. The district is 30% Hispanic in registration; with the largest Hispanic block being Puerto Rican. Unlike Miami-Dade, the Hispanic voters in the central Florida region lean much more Democratic. However, Hispanics also have weaker turnout than both white and black voters. In the last decade, the Hispanic share of registration has lagged votes cast to some degree within the district.

I cannot say with any confidence election day will bring a large Hispanic bump in support. It likely won’t. We will be looking at a special that is whiter than average. This doesn’t automatically help/hurt either party - as the white vote has plenty of democrats and republicans Democrats are also mitigating partisan issues there with strong turnout among Democratic leaning Asian voters and getting the district’s black population to the polls. It just means for sure we are not going to be able to gleam alot about Hispanic voter attitudes from this race.

What will Election Day Bring?

Democrats no doubt have PTSD about election day. For the last several cycles, election day has become the moment that Republicans flood the polls and wipe away Democratic leads. This happened in maximal doses during COVID, when partisan allegiance to different voting methods led to massive gaps. Since the end of COVID as a major day-to-day driver, and since Florida reset its Vote by Mail lists, the partisan gap via method is not as severe as it once was. However, there is still a GOP lean on election days.

In the Jacksonville Mayor’s race from last year, which did see Democrats flip the post, the GOP still maintained a lead in election day ballots. We should likely expect the same this time, but the margin will matter more than anything.

So how can we be sure who might show up? Well lets look at which voters have strong voting history but still have not cast ballots. I grabbed any voter in the district yet to cast a ballot but who voted in 2 of the last 3 general elections, or 3 of the last 3. This would mean 2022, 2020, and 2018.

So here we do see that among 3/3s, the most likely to show up, does lean GOP, indicating they have more of there supervoters to show up. However, not far behind in the 2/3s, Democrats have the lead over the GOP. Republicans lead both groups totaled, but hardly by a dominant amount. Both parties have a large pool of likely voters to drag to the ballot boxes on Tuesday. In addition, when I pulled a list of voters with 6/6 elections (both the 3 generals and their respective august primaries), DEMOCRATS lead that pool 2,400 to 2,300.

How election day will go will depend on the ground games and last minute pushes. With no effort on either side, the law of averages would say more Republicans show up. However, field programs can alter this, and as I’ve discussed, Democrats can afford to trail in the final vote cast if they win NPAs. The worry for Democrats is not a GOP-leaning election day, its a GOP tsunami on election day. The data does not say that will be an inevitability. But it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. So Democrats need to keep knocking on doors and calling voters.

So how many votes can we expect on Tuesday? Well I opted to look at past special elections that were heavily contested in Florida, and looked at what the total vote would be in HD35 if turnout matched any of them.

These four specials all saw both parties heavily invest. HD72, based in Sarasota, has the record for votes cast thanks to its demos of retirees and upper-income suburbanites. I wouldn’t expect that level; as the early vote didn’t point to it. I don’t presume to project turnout, as their are many factors that could drive it past 20% or keep it under. Really what matters is how many Democrats vs Republicans show up; whether its 6,000 or 33,000 total. Of course, the weather may also affect this - and forecast right now calls for rain and thunderstorms on Tuesday.

We will see what happens Tuesday night. We will find out if Ron DeSantis’ plan to delay this election was a smart call or if he was underestimating his party’s ability to hold the seat. Of course for Ron, it won’t matter regardless. His Presidential dreams about to truly go up in smoke.