Solid blue no more: A Florida political analyst explains where Gen Z is going

Democrats can no longer assume young Floridians will vote blue, highlighting the need for the party to learn how to sway voters through social media, renowned political analyst Susan MacManus said during the Capital Tiger Bay Club’s post-election deep dive.

Florida remains a bellwether in the diversity of its demographic makeup, the professor emerita at the University of South Florida said on Monday, pointing to the growing political division among Gen Zers and millennials. The two generations make up 35% of the state’s electorate.

“This used to be solid, solid blue territory but, look, there’s only a plurality of both. The Gen Zers and millennials are NPAs [voters with no partisan affiliation], but there’s almost no difference, a 1% difference, between registered young Democrats and young Republicans,” she said. “Unbelievable, and nobody was paying a bit of attention to what was happening on the age front.”

According to voter registration data MacManus compiled, a higher percentage of millennials and Gen Z voters identify as NPAs, 33% and 32%, respectively. When it comes to the GOP and Florida Dems, the rates are equal for millennials at 32%. Meanwhile, Democrats hold only a one percentage point advantage over Republicans in Gen Z registered voters.

“Usually, you think of the new voters as largely young and largely Democratic, but they certainly were not in our state,” MacManus said.

Between the 2024 and 2020 elections, there were shifts in technology and communication that President-elect Donald Trump took advantage of to appeal to a broader electorate of new voters, such as his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, MacManus said.

“Technology changed, people changed, issues changed. It’s never a good idea to go back to the last previous election, particularly in a state like Florida that changes its demographics so fast and rely upon that kind of strategy to win a current election,” she said, referring to traditional methods of campaigning, such as canvassing, compared to the conservative media ecosystem.

‘Very silent, very quiet base’

To Florida State University students in the crowd, MacManus’ analysis of young voters made sense.

Lauren Klostreich, a senior political science student, said she noticed more consistent tabling from the Democratic groups but that the campus chapter of Turning Point USA was able to get much more attention when it hosted former U.S. House Rep. Matt Gaetz in October.

“At table events, I really want to stop there if I already agree with the party, so I’ll go for the free donuts occasionally. But like, the Matt Gaetz thing, I knew people from both parties who were going,” she said.

Another student, Alyssa Yon, pointed to the assassination attempt against Trump in Pennsylvania as another instance in which she saw how conservative her peers were.

“I feel like it was unearthing like a very silent, very quiet base happening there that I was not aware of because I’m from Orlando proper, and I don’t see that every day,” she said.