{"id":210060,"date":"2026-03-28T22:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T22:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/210060\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T22:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T22:52:10","slug":"could-a-democratic-triumph-in-florida-be-a-bellwether-of-a-blue-wave-in-red-state-midterm-elections-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/210060\/","title":{"rendered":"Could a Democratic triumph in Florida be a bellwether of a blue wave in red state midterm elections? | Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can the Democratic party<\/a> once again become a force to be reckoned with in Florida<\/a>? That seemingly implausible question surfaced last Tuesday in the wake of upset victories scored by the party\u2019s candidates in two state legislative races, one of whom defeated a Republican nominee\u2019s bid to represent Donald Trump<\/a> himself.<\/p>\n

Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Democrats<\/a> have flipped more than two dozen legislative districts held by Republican lawmakers nationwide. Amid mounting discontent with the high cost of living, the violent tactics used to enforce the administration\u2019s mass deportation agenda and bewilderment over the erratic imposition of tariffs, Democratic candidates have captured a series of traditionally Republican seats in states spanning deep-red Mississippi to purple Virginia.<\/p>\n

But no recent Democratic victory may have stung the president more than the triumph of political newcomer Emily Gregory in Florida\u2019s 87th house district. The 40-year-old owner of a fitness center for women eked out a narrow win over Trump-endorsed candidate Jon Maples. The district encompasses Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach county, and in 2024 the Republican incumbent handily won re-election by a margin of 19 percentage points.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a return to the [political] center,\u201d said Gregory, who focused her campaign on affordability issues such as the skyrocketing cost of property insurance and healthcare. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen Florida as this fixed, ruby-red state, and we\u2019ve seen a state legislature that doesn\u2019t even attempt to tackle the kitchen table issues facing Floridians. They talk about how expensive Florida has become, how hard it is to make your bills, how people aren\u2019t able to save. I attribute our victory to having responded to their real priorities and needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sunshine state has been a recurring source of stormy weather for Democrats for many years. No Democrat has won a statewide office since 2018. Twenty of Florida\u2019s 28 congressional seats are held by Republicans. The lame-duck Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has enjoyed supermajorities of 60% or more in both chambers of the state legislature throughout most of his term in office. Once regarded as a swing state that voted for Barack Obama, Florida has delivered for Trump in three consecutive presidential elections, with an expanding margin of victory.<\/p>\n

But the victories of Gregory and fellow Democrat Brian Nathan in the 14th state senate district byelection, coupled with the election of Miami\u2019s first Democratic mayor in 28 years last December, point to a change in the party\u2019s fortunes.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlorida is a red state, but there couldn\u2019t be a better year for Democratic candidates who talk about affordability to run for office and win,\u201d says Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist and outspoken critic of Trump in Florida who co-founded the Lincoln Project in 2019 with other moderate conservatives and disaffected Republicans. \u201cTrump is profoundly unpopular in an area that he should be strong on, which is the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new Reuters\/Ipsos poll released last Tuesday found the president\u2019s approval rating hitting a new low of 36%, with a mere 29% of respondents voicing support for his handling of the economy. Buoyed up by such opinion surveys and the impressive winning streak that Democratic nominees have compiled during the past 12 months, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) is targeting hundreds of legislative seats at the state level in 42 senate and house chambers this fall. The committee plans to raise $50m to fund the campaigns of Democratic candidates, and it recently added the legislatures of Arizona and New Hampshire as lawmaking bodies that are ripe for wresting away from the GOP\u2019s control.<\/p>\n

Should Florida be added to that list? An internal DLCC strategy memo issued late last year limited the party\u2019s ambitions in 2026 to the reduction of the Republican supermajorities in both houses of the Florida legislature.<\/p>\n

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee\u2019s target list for this year\u2019s US House of Representatives contests, meanwhile, prominently features two Latina lawmakers, Maria Elvira Salazar and Anna Paulina Luna, whose support among Hispanic voters may be eroding in the face of the Trump administration\u2019s failure to lower inflation and its relentless deportation of undocumented Latin American immigrants.<\/p>\n

Another Republican in the committee\u2019s crosshairs is Cory Mills, a 45-year-old army veteran whose suburban Orlando district has seen an influx of registered Democratic voters since he was first elected to Congress in 2022.<\/p>\n

But registered Republican voters still outnumber registered Democrats by nearly 1.5 million, and outside the major urban centers of Miami\/Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa\/St Petersburg, the state remains a largely GOP bastion.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be very careful about reading too much into a special election result,\u201d cautioned Kevin Wagner, a professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University and director of its Political Communication Lab. \u201cThe Democrats will say this is more evidence of a giant blue wave that will swamp Florida. But the state has trended Republican for the last 20 years, and that isn\u2019t likely to be reversed in a single year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans also downplay the significance of the Democratic triumphs. \u201cA low-turnout state house special election is a snapshot of local quirks, candidate dynamics and turnout math,\u201d said Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser at the Republican National Committee, in a statement. \u201c[It is] not some grand verdict.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wild card in any Florida election, however, is the state\u2019s large number of independent voters who now exceed 3.3 million. If a sizable majority of those voters back Democratic nominees and the absence of Trump\u2019s name on the November ballot lowers turnout among registered Republicans as it did in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, Democrats could flip one or two congressional districts and pick up more seats in the state legislature.<\/p>\n

One of those hopefuls is Pia Dandiya, 38, a former high school principal who is seeking her party\u2019s nomination to unseat Republican incumbent Brian Mast in Florida\u2019s 21st congressional district.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tide is turning,\u201d says the Harvard-educated daughter of Indian immigrants. \u201cThere is an appetite for a pragmatic, commonsense Democrat who is committed to delivering results quickly, and our party has an opportunity to write a new chapter for what it means to be a Democrat in Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can the Democratic party once again become a force to be reckoned with in Florida? That seemingly implausible…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-210060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}