St Johns County Republicans add 4,486 more voters in time for Presidential Primary

Heading into the March 17th Presidential Primaries, registration trends show more new Florida voters might have been inspired to vote for President Donald Trump than to vote for any of his Democratic challengers.

With the registration deadline passed, Historic City News local reporters determined that St Johns County was consistent with voters across Florida who added 4,486 Republican voters; compared to 3,923 Democrat voters.

Since the November, 2018, General Election, Republicans have added approximately 141,000 new voters in Florida, while Democrats increased their party by 130,000. That difference is more than in the 2018 U.S. Senate election when Rick Scott beat Bill Nelson by 10,033 votes.

The latest voter registration numbers are unofficial totals compiled by Florida Politics from the state’s 67 Supervisors of Elections, mostly through Tuesday, which was the last day anyone could register to vote in the March 17th Primary Election. The official close-of-book voter registration numbers for the primary will not be released until later this month, through the Florida Division of Elections.

• On March 17, Trump will be facing former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld for the Republican nomination this year, an election with absolutely no suspense.

• Democratic voters, on the other hand get a choice among eight candidates who’ve offered more surprises than met expectations in recent weeks, and who might continue to do so all the way into the Florida primary. They are former Vice President Joe Biden, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California businessman Tom Steyer, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The statewide tallies find Florida now has at least 13,698,000 registered voters, up about 420,000 since the general election in 2018. While Republicans made gains, Democrats still hold the slight registration advantage statewide. There now are more than 5 million registered Democrats, roughly 5,076,000 in the latest count. There are 4,821,000 registered Republicans. That gives Democrats a 37 percent to 35 percent advantage.

Still, the greatest increase in voter registration again was seen among independent voters. The combined total of official no-party affiliated voters and those in other parties (some counties do not break them out) increased by about 149,000 since the 2018 general election. There now are 3,800,000, about 28 percent of the total electorate.

Those voters cannot vote on March 17, except in a handful of municipal elections, because Florida’s primaries are closed.

Republicans managed to sign up more voters than did Democrats in 46 counties. Most of those were rural counties with just a few thousand total voters, but they also included many mid-size counties, plus Miami-Dade, at least through Feb 12.

Democrats gained against Republicans in only 17 counties, which included most of the populous, urban counties, and a few suburban counties.