Heading into the 2016 presidential election, Republican strategists believed the party needed to broaden its appeal. This Tuesday will offer another sign of how, in the past decade, the party has thoroughly embraced a different theory.
After Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012, the conventional wisdom was that successful candidates expanded their party’s coalition by peeling away voters who typically backed the other side — as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had.
Donald Trump challenged that assumption. He showed Republicans they could win by generating intense support among the party’s base while bringing previously disengaged voters to the polls.
In Florida, those competing theories will be tested again.
In Florida, those competing theories will be tested again as both parties choose their nominee for governor. Democrats appear poised to nominate a candidate who explicitly promises crossover appeal. Republicans look set to choose one who’s betting that mobilization and partisan intensity matter more than winning over the middle.
On the Democratic side, front-runner David Jolly is a former Republican member of Congress who left the GOP during the Trump era and eventually became a Democrat. His campaign pitches itself as being above partisanship, prioritizing kitchen table issues over the conservative culture wars fought by current Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. His website puts it clearly: “This isn’t politics as usual.”
He has a double-digit lead in recent polls over state Rep. Dotie Joseph and progressive Dayna Marie Foster, though a significant number of voters have said they don’t know who they will support.
On the Republican side, the leader in the polls is Trump-endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds, who has become a national figure as a combative pro-Trump surrogate on television, defending him on a range of issues, including immigration and his personal controversies. His campaign is mixing immigration enforcement and deregulation with calls to get “radical woke ideology” out of schools and a DOGE-style reform effort. His website’s tagline: “TRUMP-ENDORSED. Proven conservative fighter.”
Donalds has a double-digit lead in recent surveys over Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, a DeSantis ally, and investment firm CEO James Fishback, best known for suggesting the “DOGE dividend” idea on X.
In a general election matchup, Donalds would be favored.
Democrats haven’t won a Florida governor’s race since 1994, and DeSantis defeated Charlie Crist — another Republican turned Democrat — by almost 20 percentage points four years ago. The GOP currently has a 1.5 million-voter registration advantage, one reason the Cook Political Report rated the race “solid Republican” before the nominees were even chosen.
Still, Democrats have some reasons to be hopeful.
When DeSantis won the open seat in 2018, he did so by less than half a percentage point. The state has 3.3 million registered voters who have no party affiliation. A University of North Florida poll in July found Donalds leading Jolly by just 5 points in a hypothetical matchup. And Donalds’ political identity is tied closely to Trump at a time when the president’s approval is slightly underwater in the state.
The race could have implications outside of the Sunshine State.
If Donalds wins comfortably in November, Republicans will have more evidence that Trump’s confrontational style of base-heavy coalition can win even when he’s not on the ballot.
If Jolly wins — or even comes close — Democrats will have evidence that Trump’s Republican Party has left behind some voters who are still gettable with the right candidate.
The race won’t settle the debate over mobilization versus persuasion. But it offers a pretty clear test of how far each approach can go.
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