Southeastern states had some of the strictest abortion laws allowed under Roe v. Wade prior to 2022, while Florida took a more lax approach, making the state a haven for late-term abortions. But in 2022, Florida passed a 15-week limit, followed by the current 6-week limit, with exceptions in place for rape, incest, domestic violence and other contingencies. With one of the strictest abortion laws in the US now on the books, enthusiasm for expanded abortion legality in the state is lower than might be expected, especially considering its long history as a purple state.

Florida voters also rejected a measure legalising recreational marijuana, bucking the trend of red states passing such measures in recent elections, and Donald Trump increased his margin of victory in the state compared to the previous two elections. Republican Sen. Rick Scott also increased his margin of victory, and the heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade county swung for Trump.

The results show an intensification of a Rightward drift that began in 2020. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won his first gubernatorial election by only 0.4 percentage points in 2018, compared to his blowout 19.4-point win in 2022, months after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And this election year, pollsters are no longer treating Florida as a swing state.

Much of Florida’s political transformation can be attributed to the events of 2020, during which the state had some of the most lax Covid restrictions in the US. Florida received more new residents from within the US than any other state in 2020, many of them from Democratic strongholds like New York. But Americans from predominantly Democratic areas did not push the state to the Left when they moved to Florida en masse. Instead, it appears that they contributed to the Rightward shift, as the influx of new Florida residents coincided with the state having more registered Republicans than Democrats for the first time in its history.

DeSantis’s LGBT-related policies, including those restricting gay and trans-related curriculum in schools, were panned in the national press but, much like the abortion issue, have seemingly done little to weaken support for Republicans in Florida. The conservative drift has not been universal, and a ballot measure legalising recreational marijuana is polling at 60%, with even Trump supporting the measure. Yet the failure of contentious social issues, most notably abortion, to chip away at Republicans’ lead is evidence of a complete Republican victory in the state, with no realignment in sight.

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is UnHerd’s US correspondent.

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