Florida!!! |
Let’s do some math: Florida Democrats currently trail Republicans in voter registrations by 940,000 voters.
Taylor Swift, who’s advocated for Dems — including President Biden— in the past, will be performing at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami for three nights in the lead-up to the election: Oct. 18, 19 and 20. The capacity for that venue is 65,326. Triple that and you’re nearly at 200,000. Sure, plenty of people in the audience will already be registered to vote or too young to cast a ballot. But a good number of them will be newly-minted adults, having turned 18 over the summer. Could she get them to sign up? All it would take is for her (and Travis Kelce, ideally) to say something like, “everyone in the audience, text five of your friends to vote.” And, boom! She’s over a million.
And that’s not even factoring in the power of social media. Throughout the years, the singer has issued multiple pleas online to urge her followers to do their civic duty. On National Voter Registration Day last year, her Instagram post helped drive a 72% increase in 18-year-olds registering compared to 2019. A push like that in Miami could turn the state blue. Or lavender haze, at the very least.
If that sounds like a long-shot to you, you’re not alone: “Few pundits consider Florida a true swing state,” Mary Ellen Klas writes (free read). “But after two years of Governor Ron DeSantis pushing his extremist agenda, including one of the toughest abortion bans in the country, and policies curtailing the teaching of Black history and gender identity, there’s a case to be made that Florida voters have had enough of the Republican Party’s obsession with culture wars.”
Public opinion polls speak to that fatigue. In a recent Fox News poll, 69% of respondents supported the right to an abortion up until fetal viability — “a resounding rejection of the six-week ban rammed into law by DeSantis,” Mary Ellen argues. No wonder the governor has one of the highest disapproval ratings of any state leader. Then there’s his “wish list” of extreme MAGA policies that landed in the legislative trash can: Bills that would prevent the removal of Confederate monuments, ban Pride flags and allow 18-year-olds to acquire AR-15s have been completely abandoned by Florida lawmakers.
Even so, state Republicans — and Donald Trump — think they have the November election in the bag. Democrats, seeing the frustration bubbling up among Sunshine State voters, hope to make the opposing party eat its words. By fielding candidates for all 140 legislative seats and 28 congressional races on the ballot this year, the left has done something no party in the state has accomplished in nearly half a century.
“We’re going to make Republicans spend money defending their dangerous and unpopular policies and make sure that Democrats, independents and even moderate Republicans know they have another option,” Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried recently said. If they manage to pull off the impossible, it’d send shockwaves through the nation. And if they could get Taylor’s help… who knows! She certainly has a history of making history.
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