Are Democrats losing influence in Miami-Dade over GOP? Depends on who you ask | Opinion

Has Miami-Dade County finally flipped red?

That’s the debate that took place this week when news spread in political circles that recent voter registration tallies released Monday showed Republicans surpassed the number of Democrats in the county. The Florida Republican Party was quick to turn the news into a PR stunt and the Democratic Party tried to debunk it.

“Together we will keep Miami-Dade County red!” the Miami-Dade Republican Party wrote on X in a retweet of a video of Gov. Ron DeSantis congratulating the party for “flipping the county red.”

The truth depends on which numbers you’re looking at. The GOP is bragging about having more voters considered “active,” whereas Democrats still have more registered voters overall in Miami-Dade County.

However you slice it, though, Democrats cannot deny they are in trouble in a county that was once a blue bastion, where Hillary Clinton won by 30 points in 2016. There’s great indication that the party has failed to engage them in recent years.

Overall, the number of registered Democrats still surpasses the GOP in Miami-Dade by a margin of around 41,000 voters. The bigger story, however, is that both parties fall behind voters without a party affiliation, according to the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Office. That’s a number both parties have conveniently chosen to ignore.

However, the GOP now has the largest number of Miami-Dade voters considered “active” at 449,337 compared to 414,680 Democrats and 417,144 independents.

An “inactive” voter is “someone for whom undeliverable mail triggered an address confirmation final notice to which the voter did not respond within 30 days,” according to the Supervisor of Elections Office. If that voter does not participate in the next two election cycles, they are removed from the voter rolls. Any contact with the elections office can return them to “active” status.

Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried criticized Miami-Dade’s elections office, run by newly elected Republican Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia, for kicking “a quarter of a million voters off of the active voter rolls — and over two-thirds of those voters are Democrats and [no party affiliation voters],” Politico Florida reported.

Indeed, there are more than twice as many Democrats deemed “inactive” than Republicans, according to data provided by Garcia’s office on Wednesday.

Garcia told the Herald Editorial Board via email that, “It’s important to understand that these figures reflect routine updates to the voter rolls, as required by Florida law” and that this happens “regularly in all Florida counties.”

“It takes about four years without us hearing from you to be removed from the voter rolls. We reach out to the voters via mail, email and text,” Garcia wrote.

Garcia also said that the number of inactive voters “are a reflection of our last presidential elections.” Indeed, the rise of inactive Democrats appears to track with the most recent election results.

Although Clinton carried Miami-Dade by 30 points in 2016, in 2020 Joe Biden won it by only seven points — and then the county flipped to Donald Trump in 2024 by 11 points.

Would these results have been different had more Democratic voters been “active?” Voter apathy is almost as bad for Democrats than voters leaving the party.

Many Democrats over the years have complained that the get-out-the-vote and voter-registration infrastructure former President Barack Obama’s campaign built in Florida in 2008 and 2012 left the state once he won. For more than a decade, Democrats have failed to replicate Obama’s success.

They ceded ground in statewide elections by losing a U.S. Senate seat to former Gov. Rick Scott in 2018. In last year’s elections, Republicans won all countywide elections in Miami-Dade, with the exception of the reelection of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, and the race for state attorney, which Democratic incumbent Katherine Fernandez Rundle won unopposed.

Even more troubling for Democrats is that, despite President Donald Trump’s sinking popularity, they haven’t yet found an effective way to oppose the president. A March CNN poll found the party’s approval rating plunged to a record low. The growing evidence that national Democratic leaders hid Biden’s frailty from the public in the lead up to the 2024 elections only makes it harder to rebuild trust with voters.

A lot can change before the 2026 midterms. But, for now, it seems that many Miami-Dade voters have given up on the Democratic Party.

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