Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may be struggling a bit on the national campaign trail, but the DeSantis Effect is alive and well in the Republican governor’s home state.
The Florida Standard reported on Friday that the latest voter registration statistics revealed that rural Jefferson County in North Florida had 4,173 Republicans, compared to 4,166 Democrats.
Thus, with that 7-voter lead, Jefferson County became the seventh Florida county to flip from blue to red in just the past two years.
In response to the news, as trumpeted by the Republican Party of Florida, GOP Sen. Rick Scott tweeted, “Florida is a red state, and we will ALWAYS reject Democrats’ socialist agenda!”
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GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler praised his party’s operatives in Jefferson County for “crushing it” in spreading the party’s message.
“It’s another great day to be a Republican in the free State of Florida,” Ziegler tweeted on Friday.
“Yesterday, 13 of Florida’s 67 counties had more Democrats than Republicans. Today, with Jefferson County flipping to Republican, Democrats now hold just 12 counties as they watch their party presence continue to dissolve.”
Last year, DeSantis won re-election by 20 points, capturing 62 of Florida’s 67 counties, and snaring victories in many Democratic strongholds, such as South Florida.
Since DeSantis first became governor in 2019, the GOP has trounced Democrats in voter registration — going from a deficit of roughly 300,000 voters in 2018 to now claiming 500,000 more voters than their rivals, a shift of about 800,000 voters.
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According to the Florida Standard, Jefferson County joined Liberty, Hamilton, Franklin, Pinellas, Hendry and Jackson counties in flipping from blue to red over the past couple of years.
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