Issue #223: The 2024 Elections by Florida State House District

Even more red

Today’s article is continuing coverage of the 2024 Election in Florida. In November, Donald Trump won the district by 13 points, drastically expanding on his 3 point win just four years ago.

You can see the full slate of precinct maps in this article.

Today I will look at the 2024 results by Florida’s 120 State House District. I have topline results, some swing maps from previous years, and how some of the ballot measures went.

• If you want to see how the districts voted in 2022; click here

• If you want to see Pre-2022 results by the Districts, check here

This article aims to offer up some key facts and figures that can be referenced in future analysis. I’ll be getting into more thorough breakdowns of different districts and the broad statewide results in upcoming articles. We are finally getting final turnout reports and plenty of digging needs to be done. For the moment, however, I know many have been awaiting this data, so I don’t want to hold off any more. If in reading this specific districts interest you and you want to know more, sound off in replies/comments.

Lets dive in.

The 2024 Results by House District

The results by State House district reflect the massive statewide win. Trump won 85 of the 120 house districts, leaving just 35 in Democratic hands.

The districts that flipped from Biden to Trump are a mix of suburban swing seats and Hispanic districts. In Tampa, for example, majority-Hispanic HD64 flipped, but so did upper-income suburb HD65. The Orlando area, once entirely made up of Biden districts, now has five Trump seats.

While several suburban seats did flip to Trump, the swings in them was much more modest, with the flips coming thanks to already narrow margins in 2020. However, among Hispanic seats, the swings were massive. Hispanic districts, or those with sizeable Hispanic populations, even if not a majority, saw the largest swings to the right.

Seats like HD47, a majority-Hispanic and largely Puerto Rican district in Osceola County, swung 16 points to Donald Trump. I talked about this district and the Osceola area broadly in my first analysis article from right after the elections. You can read that here.

Meanwhile, HD117, a majority-Hispanic district that is also around 30% Black, saw the biggest swing in the state; 29% to the the right. It went from Biden +30 to Trump +2 for Harris. The swing here is believed to be heavily driven by the Hispanic population, which until recently remained more Democratic as it did not have a large Cuban population. A quick look at turnout data seems to indicate a solid GOP turnout advantage there too. But like I said turnout needs more time to sift through.

Hispanic share of the district is heavily correlated with swing. Notably several majority-Black districts swung to right, but the biggest swings came in districts with solid Hispanic shares: around 20% to 30%. Seats otherwise heavily Black with little Hispanic population swung right, but by much less. As we work to get final racial makeup of votes cast a deeper dive into demographic trends will be conducted.

Meanwhile, the lone district to swing to the left was HD15. This makes sense, as Nassau County had the smallest right-wing shift in the state The district takes Nassau, which is still deep red, and includes several of the Democratic-leaning and growing suburbs of Southwest Jacksonville. These suburbs were added to the 15th and removed from a neighboring district as part of a Republican gerrymander of the area. I wrote about these gerrymandered lines back in 2023. Like HD117, I will dedicate an entire seprerate article to HD15 and the broad Jackosnville area; which did see much smaller right wing swings.

Additional Trendline Notes

The fact that most districts swung to the right is not a shock considering the state’s 9.8% swing. Therefore I wanted to also break down the swing based on if it was higher or lower than the statewide shift. Districts colored blue saw a swing smaller than the 9.8% statewide shift, and red was higher.

The map here really emphasizes the Democratic problem emerging in South Florida. Nearly the entire region is swinging over the statewide shift. In Orlando and Tampa, districts with sizeable Hispanic populations also stand out. One district, HD67, is the same as the state swing.

Now while Harris lost ground to Biden nearly everywhere, there is still some broader long-term shifts to highlight. Trump ushered in a new era of politics when it comes to realigning coalitions. Democrats lost ground big with working class voters, but have made ample gains with suburban voters. While Harris could not continue those suburban gains from Biden, she still performed better than Hillary Clinton in the suburbs. The blue districts below are suburban seats that began a big trend left with Clinton/Trump and moved further left with Biden. While Harris lost some ground back, she still remained largely above HRC in the suburbs.

Of course, the drops in the rest of the state are massive; doing far worse with all other voters; especially working class whether white or non-white. The massive right-wing shifts far eclipse modest left-wing shifts, and that is the core problem for Democrats. Left wing gains are modest and few, right-wing gain are widespread.

If we go back even even further, looking at Harris vs Obama from 2012, a similar pattern emerges. Big gains in several affluent suburbs, but massive drops everywhere else.

These are not modest right-wing swings either. While Harris at most did 16 points better in margin than Obama, she did over 40% worse in many districts. HD117, which I promise is going to get its own article, was a 61% margin shift to the right. Stunning.

Candidate Performances

With the terrible Harris performances in Florida, House Democratic candidates had a terrible night. Pickup opportunities fell flat; with the lone exception being HD45; a Biden +5 seat that narrowly backed Trump. That seat, however, had a Republican incumbent under indictment. All other pickup opportunities fell short and Democrats lost two DEM held seats; HD93 and HD35 (the seat they’d picked up in the January 2024 special election)

Overall, there was little ticket splitting in the districts. Most seats saw only minor differences between the top and bottom of the ticket. In the House districts that were contested (Democrats ran candidates in every seat, but Republicans left several unchallenged) Trump got 58.5% of the vote as the Republican candidate shares came out to 60%. Below shows if the house candidate outperformed or underperformed the top of the ticket. Blue is the Democratic candidate outperformed Harris, red is if the Republican candidate outperformed Trump.

As you can see, only a few districts went beyond 5% differences. The biggest overperformer, however, was Tallahassee’s Allison Tant; who did 9.7% better than Harris did in HD9. This seat, which has most of its votes from Leon County, stretches into rural Jefferson and Madison counties. Tant won her race by 14 points!

I actually wrote about Tant’s race back in October. She faced developer Spencer Brass; who despite being openly gay attacked Tant with anti-transgender ads. His campaign got big injections of money from Republicans and he blanketed the city of Tallahassee with signs. Tant crushed him, and I will be writing about this race in a separate article.

The full list of top over-performers can be seen below. I have the top 5 DEM and GOP candidates based on the % they overperformed the top of the ticket. I also included how their vote totals compared with the Presidential ticket. For example, HD9 saw Tant get 4,000 MORE raw votes than Harris while Brass got 6,300 fewer than Trump. On the Republican side, the biggest overperformer was State Senator Debbie Mayfield, who got 3,100 more votes than Trump while her challenger underperformed Harris by 5,500. Mayfield was termed out as a State Senator but ran for the open state house seat.

Drop off is common in down-ballot races and plenty has been said about people showing up to vote Trump and leaving other races blank. That can definitely effect races, but don’t forget there are some Democrats who do the same for Harris. For example, Tant getting 4,000 more votes than Harris means she got at least 4,000 Trump voters. However, sense for sure some Harris voters left the ballot blank, that means she got even more Trump voters to still outperform.

I intend to look at down-ballot drop off and such as a district and precinct level as time goes on.

Constitutional Amendments

I’ve also been working to break down the Florida ballot measures by State House District.

Amendment 2, which was to “guarantee the right to hunt and fish” was the strongest ballot measure in 2024; getting 67% of the vote.

The measure’s opposition largely revolved around concerns it was a trojan horse to eliminate gun restrictions or de-regulate hunting permits. As a result, pockets of left-wing opposition emerged. The lone seat to reject the measure, however, was the left-leaning and suburban HD42, located in the heart of Orlando.

I have also mapped out Amendments 3 and 4 by House district, with the table of results as well. You can find those, for the moment, over on my $5 Patreon. Don’t worry these maps will go public down the line as I work on articles about those very amendments, For the moment, my Patron will serve as a repository of maps for future articles

I’m working on an article breaking results down by State Senate with a look ahead at the 2026 battles there. Expect far more on 2024 in Florida in the coming weeks and months.