Florida Democrats Are Done Losing. Are They Finally Turning the Tide?

For ten years, Florida Democrats have endured crushing losses in what has come to feel like a political forsaken land. Thanks to President Trump, MAGA Republicans have successfully turned Florida into a deep red state from the up and down ballot races and maintained its dominance. 

On the federal level, Republicans hold both seats in the U.S. Senate and 20 of the 28 seats in the House of Representatives. Statewide, aside from the governorship held by Ron DeSantis for nearly two terms, Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature, and all seven seats of the state supreme court. In 2024, Republicans picked up two additional seats in the state House elections, solidifying its supermajority status. 

Now, a pair of surprising wins in the state legislature last week gave Democrats a renewed sense of hope, which has energized grassroots organizers and party leaders alike.

“We can get back there. We are in this place now, but this isn't fixed. This isn't forever,” said Emily Gregory, Florida state House of Representative-elect who pulled a surprising victory against a Trump-endorsed candidate in the district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.  

How a Democrat flipped a Trump-linked district

Gregory, a first-time candidate and a small business owner in her 40s, told TIME that her winning was rooted in tackling key affordability issues that voters care about: healthcare, property insurance, education by talking to as many voters as possible throughout her campaign and proposing reasonable policies. 

“I definitely heard, by far the most, ‘why is my home insurance so much higher than it was five, six years ago? Why? I'm not getting more coverage, you know, and it's thousands of dollars,’” she said. “It can be a huge percentage increase and that has a state-level solution.”

Gregory’s platform reflected a chronic affordability crisis across the Sunshine State. According to the National Education Association, Florida ranks 50th in average teachers’ pay for the second year in a row. In terms of health care, the rising costs are understood to be pushing as many as a third of the 4.7 million Floridians on the Affordable Care Act to drop coverage next year because of the higher costs. 

By prioritizing the economic concerns of her constituents, she managed to earn support from Democrats, Independents, and even some Republican neighbors. A close look at the election result breakdown also showed how many Republicans and Independents voted for Gregory who won by 800 votes. Among voters who cast their ballots in the special election in Palm Beach County, more than 15,000 people are registered Republicans, while more than 12,000 people are registered Democrats, and 5,316 people have no party affiliation.

Gregory’s opponent, Jon Maples, a financial planner and former Lake Clarke Shores Council member, told local media that his team will be evaluating his next game plan as he has filed to run for the same district for the midterm election. 

“I take full responsibility, and there will be some changes as we move forward now,” Maple told Florida Politics.

Democrats win deep red districts by focusing on rising costs

A similar pattern also appeared in a special state Senate race in West Tampa, a Republican stronghold. Democrat Brian Nathan, a union leader and Navy veteran, beat Republican lawmaker Josie Tomkow on Monday by roughly 400 votes, despite Republicans outnumbering Democrats by more than 7,300 in voting turnout. POLITICO also reported Nathan was outspent by 10 to 1 in the race. 

“Florida has gotten more expensive over the last, I don't know, 10,15, years — at least as long as I've been here, and wages haven't kept up,” Brian Nathan said in a local radio interview. “Actually address the issues that voters have, and the voters will reward you with their trust.”

Publicly, Republican elected officials and strategists are brushing off the wins as anomalies, saying the recent wins of Democrats were not an indication of midterm election results. Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, who is running for the state’s governor, told CNN that the size of the electorate in the midterm is going to tip the scale in favor of Republicans. 

“It’s not about a warning sign. It’s a reminder that you take nothing for granted,” Donalds said. 

Republicans downplay losses as local results show narrowing margins

Angie Wong, a Republican strategist based in Miami, told TIME that Florida remains fundamentally Republican and has “strong advantages in organization, fundraising and voter registration.”

“These isolated wins show Democrats can compete in targeted areas particularly by focusing on affordability, housing and local concerns, but they do not change the overall trajectory of the state,” she said. 

But privately, both parties are seeing additional signs that Democrats are chipping away Republicans’ power in their homebase, starting in local and state elections. The race to turn Florida purple started in Miami in 2025, when Democrat Eileen Higgins won the Miami mayoral race, the first Democrat elected in almost 30 years.

A few months later, Democrat Andy Thompson beat his opponent in the Boca Raton mayoral race by five votes, the first Democrat elected in 33 years. Even among races that Democrats have lost in the past year, the margins of losses have become thinner. Republican Rep. Jimmy Patronis of Florida won the special election in April 2025 by 14 points, in a congressional district that Matt Gaetz won by 32 points in 2024. 

Affordability crisis reshapes Florida’s midterm battleground

Early polling, including a recent poll from the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab released earlier this month, found that 50% Florida voters say affordability is at the top of their minds, a trend that has continued in the state for at least two years in polling numbers. 

“Every election, or special election, it's been unbelievable. The overperformance of Democrats,” said Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel of Florida, who has represented Palm Beach County in the U.S. House for more than 13 years. She added that as the state with the nation’s highest number of enrollment of the Affordable Care Act, Florida has been hit hard with the rising cost of health insurance. Advocacy groups warn that for more than 4 million Floridians, roughly 20% of the state’s population, the monthly premiums are expected to increase by double digits in 2026. 

Adding to cost-of-living anxiety are rising gas prices driven by the war in Iran, pushing Florida’s gas prices to a four-year high, AAA said, along with sharp increases in home insurance premiums fueled by more frequent hurricanes. Despite recent drops in prices, Florida has the highest average statewide non-renewal rate, with a non-renewal rate increasing by 280% from 2018 to 2023, according to a report from the Senate Budget Committee. 

“I'll be honest, there's a lot of candidates, strategists and myself included, frankly, that believe that this is gonna be quite the fundraising boost for Democratic candidates in Florida,” said one Democratic operative who is not authorized to speak publicly.

The operative said that the state Democrats were hoping, and eventually failed, to capitalize on the abortion and marijuana legalization referendums and the excitement for a presidential election in 2024. 

Feeling bullish from recent gains at the local and state levels, Democrats from both Tallahassee and Washington D.C. are ramping up efforts to challenge more Republicans in the midterms. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Punchbowl News that House Democrats think there are “at least a half a dozen Florida Republicans” who are vulnerable in the midterm election. Meanwhile, some Republicans are now publicly cautioning about a mid-decade redistricting effort pushed by DeSantis, which could backfire on House Republicans by including more Democratic voters into their districts. 

In Tallahassee, Florida Democrats are aiming to flip “over a dozen seats” in central and southern Florida in the state legislature to break Republicans’ supermajority, according to the Democratic operative.  

“We are not without good members with good ideas, who have proposed good bills. We are just without the power to be able to really, really push forward what we want to pass,” she said. 

Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party since 2023, says that Florida Democrats are capitalizing on the excitement about candidates who prioritized the affordability crisis, and brought in both Independent voters and Republican voters into the fray. The biggest change since Nathan and Gregory’s win, Fried says, is “hope.”

“We had a lot of volunteers in both of these two seats that came out, knocked on doors, made phone calls, wrote postcards, sent text messages, and they saw that their work paid off,” Fried said. “Donors are taking our phone calls faster than they had in previous attempts. And people are excited because they see that Florida has always been worth fighting for.”