Issue #217: Precinct Maps for the 2024 Elections in Florida

How Florida voted

Christmas has come early everyone. After spending weeks digging through Florida’s election results county-by-county, I have 2024 precinct maps ready to go. While the Secretary of State does release precinct-level results, their timeline for release is basically “whenever we feel like it.” August primary data is still not up, so I definitely was not going to wait around.

I’ve collected the precinct-level election results for every statewide contest Florida had this year.

• President

• US Senate

• Two Supreme Court retentions

• Six Constitutional Amendments

I’ve decided the bulk of these statewide maps in this substack for easy viewing. I’m going to wait on the final turnout data before getting deep into analysis of why a candidate or amendment won/lost. I’ll offer some short thoughts on the amendments, but expect much more detailed looks at those races further down the line.

With that, lets get into it.

President and US Senate

Here is the map of Donald Trump’s 13% win.

Compared to the 2020 election, there is not only far more red, but many formerly deep-blue regions are now light red. While Miami-Dade flipping gets a great deal of attention, Broward County being much lighter blue than normal is also a major red flag for Democrats. I’ve already written about the results in Osceola, and you can see some maps of the results in Hillsborough here.

There is another way to look at the election results. Rather than color-coding by percent won, this map below shows the results by density of the win margin. In other words, darker colors mean a candidate had a larger number of NET votes per square mile. This highlights where big raw vote leads come from for each candidate.

Republicans have far more dark red voting blocks to pull from. Southwest Florida along I-75, all of I-95 north of Palm Beach, these allow Republicans to rack up big margins. You can even see the Villages in NE Sumter County stand out. Democrats, meanwhile, just do not have the same massive voter blocks outside of core cities. You can see a 2020 version of that map here.

The US Senate race was very close to President, with a similar vote breakdown. This finally broke Rick Scott’s history of very narrow victories.

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (DMP), did 0.5% better than Harris. Overall she did better than Harris in Southeast Florida and across many of the central Florida working class and rural counties. However, Harris outran DMP in the panhandle and Southwest (where Rick Scott is from).

Despite DMP coming from Miami-Dade, she only modestly overperformed there. Her strongest showings were in more ancestral Democratic pockets outside of the panhandle. Meanwhile Harris outran DMP with Black voters in the panhandle. However, much of these over/under performances were very narrow, within just a handful of points. Broadly speaking, ticket splitting is becoming less common, and in Florida that was definitely the case.

The Constitutional Amendments

Now lets look at the six constitutional amendments that were voted on. A reminder that all measures needed 60% to pass. If you want to know the backstory on Florida’s 60% rule, I wrote about it here.

Amendment 1 was put on the ballot by the Florida legislature and was designed to make school board races partisan. As Florida politicos know, school board races have become increasingly partisan in recent years. Ron DeSantis has made a big effort to oust school board members and reshape education in the state. After having a good deal of success with this in 2022, he had setbacks in 2024. I wrote about his August setback here. The proposal, which Republican leaders supported, got 55%, but did not secure the needed 60% to pass.

While broadly this something Republicans wanted and Democrats opposed, that was more clear in the activist and elected official world than it was with average voters. The biggest sources of opposition were Democratic areas; with Gainesville and Tallahassee being some of the biggest hotbeds of opposition. However, democrats in places like Jacksonville or Gadsden were supportive of the measure. Local party control could also affect this. After all, if you were a Democrat in deep-blue Gadsden, why not force party labels on it. Likewise Republicans in Tallahassee broadly voted NO, not wanting such a change that would only hurt their candidates. All that said, many voters were middling on the measure; with many YES/NO areas not being landslides either way. I’ll be looking back at this measure in much more detail further down the line.

Amendment 2 had the strongest support of any proposal. This was the measure to enshrine the right to hunt and fish in the Florida constitution. This is a measure that has been pushed in several states; with the Florida legislature agreeing to put it on the ballot.

Opposition to the measure was largely based around concerns it might be a Trojan Horse to either weaken gun restrictions or hunting regulations. Environmental groups and left-wing organizations broadly recommended a NO vote, with it being pointed out the right to hunt/fish isn’t being questioned. Opposition popped up in several urban and broadly left-wing areas. However, even a few Trump-backing exurban precincts were a NO. Rural voters, regardless of party or race, were all YES.

Amendment 3, put on the ballot by petitions, would have legalized marijuana in Florida. This, along with Amendment 4, were the two big hot button amendments. The amendment got 56% of the vote, short of the 60% threshold. The measure did well in rural communities, but did not get nearly the margins it needed in city and suburban centers. Its loss in Miami-Dade is especially damning.

Many reasons can be attributed to the loss. It cannot be overlooked how much money Ron DeSantis spent on defeating this and amendment 3. I documented this here, but DeSantis weaponized state agencies against A3 and A4; including taxpayer-funded ads against both measures.

Speaking of, Amendment 4, which would have guaranteed abortion access until viability, got 57% of the vote. Like A3, this measure was put on the ballot by citizens and was subject to great deals of interference from DeSantis.

Amendment 4 did much stronger in urban and suburban centers, but was much weaker in rural/religious communities. The measure not securing a majority in Republican exurbs like Clay and St Johns is definitely party of its loss - not enough suburban Republican support.

Before the election, many voters speculated who would ticket split on Amendments 3 and 4. Both were lefty amendments that DeSantis opposed. While both measures broadly had the same left-wing base of support, their expanding support differed. The map below shows which amendment did better than the other by precinct.

Rural communities were much more pro-3 than pro-4. This really shouldn’t be a surprise, as these religious areas where abortion opposition is rooted heavily in “life at conception.” While these voters are broadly conservative and may not be smokers, they also would have a broadly more libertarian view that. Counter this with the suburbs and many urban areas, where the right to bodily autonomy has much more broad support. In addition, some of the YES-4 voters are parents who are concerned about legalized products filtering down to kids. For them, the right to your body is important, but weed is a luxury.

I intend to talk about Amendments 3 and 4 MUCH MORE once we get the final party and racial data. Looking at these amendments with race/age/gender/party in mind will give us more information on how they failed to get to 60%.

Next up was Amendment 5; which did not have any real controversy to speak of. This legislature-added amendment will adjust the Homestead exemption (a property tax exemption on your primary dwelling) to adjust for inflation. The current exemptions are a fixed figure - like the first $25,000 of your home value not being subject to property taxes. The amendment will adjust these figures to inflation changes.

Little opposition to this measure existed. Some democratic pockets emerged, largely around issues of how to implement and the fact that property taxes a critical local government funding mechanism. Florida voters have been up and down on different property tax exemptions in recent years; with many voters understanding that the tax is pretty critical for local services. However, this measure SORED to support thanks to likely having “inflation” in the title. This measure’s easy passage really stands in contrast to some recent tax amendments, so I plan to write about this in more detail early next year. I think its passage further emphasizes how much inflation mattered to voters.

The final amendment was Amendment 6. This legislature-added amendment would have repealed the state’s public financing system. Florida has a public financing system for statewide candidates who agree to certain spending limits. In the modern campaign era, more candidates forgo this. In general, voters are iffy on the issue, and that was reflected in the vote. A narrow majority approved it, but well below 60%.

Most areas had little strong opposition or support for the amendment. Democrats who knew that it was a Republican-pushed measure voted NO. However, many republican areas also voted NO. Few areas were heavily YES. This was truly a vote of “ehhh I could take it or leave it.”

Final Notes

Like I said at the start, I’ll be looking at these votes in much more detail once we have the final turnout and vote cast data. I also kept the Supreme Court retention maps off here due to size limitations. I’ll be talking about those votes in an article looking at the long history of retention votes anyway.

In the meantime I am going to be working to aggregate these statewide votes to the State Senate and State House level. Thanks to the criminally-large number of counties that allow their precincts to be split by district, this means a bit of math and time to get the figures as accurate as possible. Once I have that done, more maps and articles will come.