Democrats have recently felt pressure from Biden’s campaign to refrain from door-to-door canvassing as the voter registration surges in Florida Republicans. This has triggered a wave of apprehension in the nation’s biggest swing state.
Due to the potential spread of coronavirus or muddying Biden’s message, many Democrats have held off from holding voter registration drives or canvassing. This has given Republicans an advantage in registering voters and cutting the gap to just 1.3 percentage points between Democrats and Republicans. The state’s Democratic advantage is now fewer than 185,000 voters, according to the Florida Division of Elections.
“It’s late in the game now. There’s been no pushback from us, meaning that for every 100 doors that Republicans have proverbially knocked on, it’s not like they pissed people off to the point where they’ve run to the Democratic Party because they’re pissed at the GOP. It’s shown to be effective,” said state Sen. Jason Pizzo.
Republicans went door-to-door when the Democrats couldn’t add on 58,000 new conservative voters for the month of August. This is a record number, being 91% greater than the same figure in 2016 for the Republicans. President Trump won the state with only 1% more of the votes, while the Democrats had an advantage of 327,000 voters over the Republicans.
Voter registration is a key in Florida elections, being that it is usually dominated by liberals. It was one of the states Barack Obama used to win in 2008 and 2011, according to his campaign advisers.
Biden’s campaign team lost a lot of voters over the last few months as they spread awareness of coronavirus and said no one should go out and vote, but it was okay to go out and demonstrate. The team hasn’t even tried to register new voters at recent campaign rallies or felt the need to do canvassing at all. The polls show this.
There have been more and more Republican voters each election year. One Republican pollster and strategist, Ryan Tyson, has found that 119,000 more Democratic voters have switched their registration to Republican or independent since 2016. This models a higher Democratic voter base and makes President Trump appear to be further behind Biden than he actually is.
“When we manage to get 57,000 new registrants in a month, It’s historic. And a lot of that is just organic. Something’s in the water and with 41 days out of the election, we find ourselves beating the Democrats at their own game,” Tyson said.
Unless voter patterns change soon, we’re looking at a Trump victory.