Issue #150: Democrats Flip Florida House District 35
The Election DeSantis delayed
On Monday, I wrote about the special election for House District 35, a swing seat that was holding a special election in the Orlando area on Tuesday. You can read my backstory here.
As I discussed in my initial article, HD35, which covers eastern Orange and Osceola Counties, is a swingish seat that has slowly moved more democratic with time. It backed Joe Biden by 5 points in 2020, but then moved heavily to the right in 2022.
While Biden won the seat, DeSantis and Rubio both took the district by 12 and 8 points respectively. When incumbent Republican Fred Hawkins resigned to take a post at a state college, the special became an instant focus for both parties.
Back in July, when the special election date was announced, I posited that the late vote (January being pretty deep into the cycle) was specifically picked because it was AFTER the Iowa caucuses. Another special election in a redder seat was scheduled for December.
DeSantis, by my logic, did not want the risk of a flipped seat undermining his electability argument to caucus voters. Now, since July, the DeSantis campaign became a nightmare, and heading into Monday’s caucuses the HD35 election was the last of their concerns. DeSantis instead spent all his time in Iowa. What did it get him? Losing to Trump by 30 points and taking zero counties!
Iowa aside, that DeSantis worry about HD35 proved to be correct, because last night Democrat Tom Keen FLIPPED HD35 for the Democrats.
The Results
The entire special election has been a contentious and expensive affair. I recommend reading Issue #149 for details; but both parties spent over $1 million on the race and the campaign had plenty of controversies.
Heading into election day, Democrats held a modest lead in early and absentee voting, leading by around 4% of votes cast and 600+ raw votes. The worry for team blue was how red election day might be. I discussed this in my preview. The data showed that both parties had plenty of “supervoters” left to show up; so it was not a guarantee that election day would be deep red. However, as election day votes came in, the GOP continued to eat away at the built-in democratic lead. When all votes were accounted for, the GOP’s 52%-32% election day margin meant they had had a nearly 1,000 vote lead via registration.
This partisan gap in turnout, an electorate that was GOP +4, made a Democratic win very hard, but not impossible. As I discussed in my preview, the NPA vote leans democratic in this district. However, it was doubtful Keen would get enough NPAs or moderate Republicans to close such a turnout gap.
Well, that is exactly what happened, because Tom Keen won the race by 3%. A 590 vote margin!
The results were a monumental feat. Keen won Orange County, which made up 75% of the vote, by 10 points, enough to offset the 62-38 loss in the rural/red precincts of Osceola.
To offer even more clarity on the vote allocation, here is a density map of these results.
As these results show, the Democratic margin came out of the densely packed and diverse suburbs around east Orlando.
This win is a much-needed shot in the arm for Democrats. So how did this happen? And what does the turnout situation mean for the future?
Turnout Issues vs Persuasion
The turnout issues I discussed for this district may give an impression that Democrats were not aggressive in their GOTV. I want to dispel that notion right now. People on the ground can vouch that there was a massive Democratic GOTV operation from weeks back and through election day. I have no doubt that without the efforts put in, that turnout gap would have been worse.
Don’t take my word, take the word of a Republican operative themselves. The Orange GOP Chair Erin Huntley told Politico Florida, in the days leading up to the vote,
“They are definitely working really hard,” she said of Democrats. “They are definitely fighting for it.” (source)
The Democratic field operation was fairly intense for this election, and continued through election day; with canvassing and phone banking shifts continuing. However, the GOP also had its field operation on the ground and were also working to galvanize their voters.
The democratic efforts were on clear display leading up to election day as Democratic returns on mail ballots continued to improve.
Two problems emerged for Democrats in this race, like it has in others before
The GOP still retains a financial lead
The DEM coalition has weaker turnout
As I discussed in my primary preview, Democrats did invest over $1 million in this race. However, the GOP outspent them by at least a few hundred thousand. Plenty of that cash went to GOTV efforts. That financial gap is always an issue because Democrats suffered from its voter base being far less likely to show up for these specials. The Democratic base of non-white and young voters are two groups with historically weaker turnout than older white voters. For Democrats, ever dime of GOTV is needed, as they must work even hard to turn out their coalition.
This was seen in my preview article when I covered Hispanic turnout. This data does not include election day, but shows how Hispanic voters in the district; which are far more Democratic, were having very weak turnout. Again keep in mind this data is as of a few days ago.
I will get final turnout by race data when the final voter lists are released. However, I expect the final results will show very low Hispanic turnout. We are dealing with a district that was far whiter and more GOP than the district’s registration or even its 2020 vote. Of course this also makes the Keen win all the more impressive.
That said, this is not a new problem, as even the Presidential years saw some degree of a turnout advantage for the GOP. The special election turnout gap was worse than 2020, but not as bad as 2022.
The Democratic turnout problem is not unique to Orlando and it applies for many blocks of voters. In Jacksonville in 2023, Democrats also saw a turnout issue; which saw election day sweep away Democratic early and mail leads. When the voting was done in Jacksonville, the GOP had a 3 point lead in votes cast.
The turnout issue among partisans was also reflected in turnout by race. White voters had a 10 point turnout advantage compared to black voters; a crucial voting block for Democrats in Jacksonville. This gap was also improved from 2022, but still higher than was desired.
However, despite that margin in turnout, the Democrat running for Mayor, Donna Deegan, WON the election. I delved deep into those races there.
So how did Donna Deegan get elected Mayor in that electorate? The same way Tom Keen won today
…. persuasion!
The results from Jacksonville showed that the Democratic Mayoral candidate Donna Deegan and Democratic Property Appraiser candidate Joyce Morgan won their races thanks to cross-over support from moderate Republicans and a solid win with NPA voters. Meanwhile, a down-ticket city council race, which saw voters just generically vote their usual party, managed to stay with the GOP. The results there revealed the importance of crossover voters.
In HD35, the story is very much the same. Now we cannot say for sure based on the precinct results, but Keen either got a chunk of Republicans or dominated NPAs. As I have discussed before, a low-turnout special like this means the DEM and GOP voters showing up are likely hardened partisans; less likely to show up just to vote against the party they belong too.
If we assume that is the case here, then Keen would have won 70-73% of NPA voters!!! A stunning number!
It is also entirely possible the NPA win was closer to 67-70% and Keen did take a batch of Republicans - certainty a possibility in a suburban-minded district. Either way, the result indicates notable support across just the Democratic voting block.
Now with these results comes good news and bad news.
Good News - The results continue to point to a frustration with Florida Republicans among voters, who are agitated by property insurance issues, abortion rights, and the feeling DeSantis and the GOP are only focused on culture war fights. This result shows a clear rejection of the GOP by NPAs. Yes its small turnout, but don’t be fooled that the GOP has not come to the same conclusion tonight that they have a problem.
Bad News - Like Jacksonville, this still points to turnout issues with democrats. Turnout is better than the 2022 nightmares, but the Democrats are still in a position of having a coalition less “reliable” to turn out than the Republican side. This means Democrats must really spend money to do GOTV, and the Republicans still have far more cash on hand. Democrats still have to be careful about which districts to fight for, as they cannot spread resources too thin. So do not expect every Biden-won seat to be fought in 2024, as the Democrats simply do not have the cash for that. Its better to be strategic and deliberate.
Now of course, this is just one special election. However, it follows a closer-than-expected race for the Miami-Dade HD118 seat last December, and follows the flipping of Jacksonville last spring.
This result clearly shows that Florida Democrats are rebuilding piece by piece. Its a long process, but its going in the right direction. One step at a time!