Florida is disappearing from the national political map

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The nation’s largest swing state is — for now, at least — turning into one of its most unseen.

Florida has historically been held up as a massively important state for any White House aspirant, and as a result has been on the receiving end of large candidate rallies, surrogate events and huge sums of national money fueling wall-to-wall campaign ads across the state’s 10 expensive media markets.

But for the first time in recent political memory, the 2024 presidential race has left Florida as a comparative afterthought. Democrats here have tried to maintain momentum and voter intensity, but nearly every measurable factor indicates that Florida is not realistically in play for them in this year's presidential contest.

“Are you happy we are a solid Republican state? It used to be …presidential elections, we would be on a razor’s edge about the state of Florida,” Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, told a crowd of the party faithful at a gathering last weekend at the Hard Rock Casino in South Florida. “Because if Republicans could not win the state of Florida, then you did not have a path to win the Electoral College.”

Florida has long been solidly red at the state level as Republicans built a now more than 1 million person voter registration advantage, and they remain firmly in control of nearly every lever of political power. But in the past, when huge sums of money flowed in during presidential races, the state was considered winnable for Democrats.

That money has almost completely dried up:

• In September 2020 alone, for instance, there was more than $57 million spent on Florida TV ads, $38 million from President Joe Biden’s campaign and $19 million from the Donald Trump campaign,according to AdImpact, a