MIAMI — Florida Democrats grew their party more than Republicans last month, but data show they’re facing their worst voter registration gap in decades ahead of the November midterms.

Even amid sinking approval ratings for President Donald Trump, backlash in Miami to his mass deportation agenda and Democratic establishment investment in local congressional races for the first time in years, Republicans have continued to expand their voter registration lead over the past two years in all 67 counties in the state.

Now, Republicans have an almost 8 percentage point lead over Democrats statewide, according to a Miami Herald analysis of Florida Division of Elections data from last month.

Republicans now make up about 39% of registered voters in the state while Democrats make up about 31%. Voters not affiliated with any political party make up about 27%.

“I often point to Florida as a good example of part of the longer term systemic failure of the Democratic Party,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin told the Herald this week. “We have myopically focused over the years on just one election cycle at the expense of a long-term strategy.”

The latest uptick in Republicans’ voter registration lead is not new. Florida Republicans have been consistently making gains in registered voters for years, surpassing Democrats in 2021 and reaching a milestone in 2022: leading by a percentage point statewide.

But in just the last two years, Republicans have gained another three percentage points over Democrats, according to data analyzed by the Herald.

The Republican surge that helped Trump flip Miami-Dade County red in the 2024 presidential election has also grown while he’s been in office, even as Miami’s Republican leaders have warned of cracks in support.

Democrats’ share of voters in Miami-Dade has shrunk by more than 2 percentage points since September 2024, according to data analyzed by the Herald

In Miami-Dade, counting active and inactive voters, Democrats now only barely lead with 33.5% of eligible voters, as of the September file. Voters registered without party affiliation make up 32.2% of the electorate and Republicans follow with 31.9% of registered voters.

When only looking at active voters, Republicans take the lead with about 35% of active registered voters, followed by Democrats with 32% and NPA with about 30%.

Although the Florida Division of Elections publishes data that include only active voters on their site, the Herald included active and inactive voters in all calculations and graphics, since inactive voters are still eligible to cast ballots. The Herald compared the September 2024 voter file to the September 2026 file for its analysis.

Voters are labeled as inactive if their mail is undeliverable and they don’t confirm their address to the state. If an inactive voter doesn’t cast a ballot over the following two federal general elections, request a mail ballot or change their registration information, they are removed from the rolls.

The Herald’s data does not include voters who’ve registered in the final five weeks before Monday’s voter registration deadline.

Party switchers play a key role

The clearest reason for the differential is that Republicans are simply registering more voters than Democrats. Of new voter registrations over the past two years, more than 560,000 joined the Republican Party, almost 370,000 registered without party affiliation and just about 328,000 registered as Democrats.

Democrats’ other problem is that they’ve been bleeding voters to the Republican Party faster than they’re getting Republicans to join their ranks.

In the Florida governor’s race this year, voters will choose between two candidates that have switched parties: Republican nominee Byron Donalds was a Democrat decades ago, and Democratic nominee David Jolly was previously a Republican congressman.

Data show that more Florida voters have taken the Donalds route than the Jolly one in recent years. About 95,000 Democrats changed their voter registration to Republican, whereas just under 40,000 Republicans joined the Democratic Party.

And local elections supervisors have removed more Democrats than Republicans from the voter rolls. About 448,000 Democrats were pulled from Florida’s voter rolls over the past two years. Around 422,600 Republicans were removed over the same time period.

But there is another factor at play hurting the Democratic Party’s public voter registration that may not necessarily translate to people voting for Republican candidates on their ballots.

More Democratic voters fled partisanship altogether over the past two years than Republicans, data show. Even with a primary cycle that brought some voters back into the partisan fold to cast a primary ballot this year, almost 113,700 Democrats switched to no-party-affiliated between September 2024 and this year, compared to the just around 67,000 Republicans who did the same.

‘Remarkable drop’ in active registered voters

Also at play in Florida voter registration numbers: a smaller share of residents are registered to vote now than at the start of this decade.

Although Florida’s population has increased by at least 1.9 million people since 2020, the number of active registered voters in the state in 2026 is around 1 million less than it was that year, according to numbers from the Division of Elections.

In 2020, there were roughly 14.6 million active registered voters. As of September 2026, there were close to 13.6 million.

University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith called it a “remarkable drop,” due in part to more barriers being put in place to register voters and “aggressive” voter roll cleanups.

Senate Bill 7050, which makes it harder for third-party canvassers to register people to vote, was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023. It added new regulations for third-party voter registration organizations (abbreviated as 3PVROs), including requiring them to re-register each election cycle.

The law also gives them less time to turn in new forms to each county’s department of elections and implemented much higher fines for violations.

“3PVROs are basically defunct at this point,” Smith said.

That has hit Florida Democrats especially hard, according to Martin, the DNC chair.

Historically, “we outsourced all of our voter registration work to outside groups and as a result, we have been losing ground on voter registration,” Martin said.

‘This month Florida voters sent a different message’

Despite the bleak picture for Democrats, other new data delivered some good news for the party. They had a net gain of over 29,600 active registered voters from September to October, outpacing Republicans, who added 29,140 voters, according to calculations by Decision Desk HQ.

It marks the first month-over-month gain for the party in at least five years, according to their data scientist Michael Pruser. That data comes from each county’s reported numbers of active registered voters for the month of September, published Oct. 1.

The Florida Democratic Party was quick to share the news.

“For years, Republicans have pointed to voter registration as proof that Florida belongs to them. This month, Florida voters sent a different message,” said Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried in an emailed statement Thursday.

Former Miami-Dade County Democratic Chairman Robert Dempster attributed Democrats’ recent small voter registration win in large part to Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon. Despite a massive spending differential in the August primary, the longtime community organizer tapped into a swell of grassroots support to defeat her Democratic challenger Alexander Vindman.

“The shift in voter registration is clearly a result of Florida voters’ enthusiasm to vote for Angie Nixon, a candidate who has … been doing grassroots organizing work up and down the state,” Dempster said. He added that every other Democratic candidate “has a better chance of winning because of the work that the Angie Nixon campaign has done.”

But the new numbers still cast a grim shadow on the Democrats. Republicans still lead Democrats by more than 10 percentage points with active registered voters.

Evan Power, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, called Democrats’ recent month-over-month registration advantage a “rounding error” and touted his party’s significant gains over the past few years in a statement this week to the Tampa Bay Times.

Smith, the political scientist at UF who spoke to the Herald a day before the Oct. 1 announcement, said that with Democrats’ deep voter registration problems heading into the November election, they should be hopeful for a repeat of what he called the “Gillum effect” in 2018.

He said between the 2016 general election and the 2018 midterm elections when Andrew Gillum ran against Ron DeSantis for governor, there was a drop in voter turnout (as is expected in a midterm election), but the drop wasn’t as sharp for Black voters as it was for other groups.

In fact, 5% of Black registered voters who were registered to vote in both the 2016 general election and the 2018 midterm election voted only in the midterm election with Gillum on the ticket, Smith said.

“If Democrats do that [ignore those voters], they are missing out on targeting people who have this pattern. Again, it’s only 5% but in a close election, that could be the difference.”

©2026 Miami Herald. Visit at miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.