Three Key Takeaways from the Florida Primaries

So goes Florida…

With Florida’s 2026 primary fading into the rearview mirror, we are just about wrapped up and in General Election mode. A few blue state primaries remain in September, as well as Oklahoma runoffs, but things are just about set pending some nominees in competitive or marginally competitive races in New Hampshire.

Florida is rapidly emerging as the king of Republican states, supplanting Texas, which had a strong run at the top for the past two decades. That’s not to say that I think Texas is doomed to blue statehood, but it’s a state that is unfortunately capable of marginally competitive races and one that Republicans are going to have to spend money on this year in the U.S. Senate to avoid a Ted Cruz-style clunker like he had in 2018. In Florida, it’s a damn cakewalk. Here is my assessment from May on Florida’s 28 House races, which remains true today:

As I have written recently on X, Florida affords an analyst something Texas does not. It has party registration, and the impact is immense. You don’t see too many fake polls flying around regarding anything going on in Florida, which very recently held statewide races that would return a one-point race between an ice cream cone and a kick in the throat.

Seth Keshel@RealSKeshel

The single biggest tell that Texas polls are trash are the polls showing Abbott in a tight race. Looking at the 2022 polls, you’ll find plenty from Aug-Sep showing a 3-5 point race. Echelon had it at +2 in September. Abbott won by 11% and has never had less than 54.8% of the

6:02 PM · Aug 7, 2026 · 18.7K Views

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This is how much Florida has shifted Republican even since Trump’s +13.1% not yet two years ago:

Four hundred twenty-nine thousand seven hundred seventeen registrations redder than it was at the time of the largest GOP presidential landslide in the state in 36 years. For the love of God, people, the mountains of north Georgia and the suburbs of Wilmington are nice, too - just in case you’ve given thought to living anywhere else.

Nevertheless, the weight of the party registration trend in Florida is immense, and last night’s three key takeaways prove my point:

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THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS OF THE FLORIDA PRIMARIES

I. The Count Itself

Does anyone remember July 10? Not so long ago - that was the date California finished counting 9,446,461 ballots for their June 2 primary. 38 days at an average of 248,591 per day, with a few delays to rig a race here and there.

Now check this out:

Florida has counted 2,767,080 gubernatorial votes in roughly twelve hours, and is practically all finished. This is a state that learned its lesson from being the butt of all election administration jokes in the 2000 election - and that was just one county! There are plenty of Floridians (and outsiders) who have issues with how certain races went, but none of them have a single bone to pick with how the results were presented. This is because the speed and transparency of the count matters to public acceptance of the results.

California’s mail-in ballot antics are highly fraudulent, and the biggest revelation about states like that, including Arizona, Washington, Oregon, and others, is that if they wanted to, they could fix the election crisis. The fact that these issues persist despite one of our largest states having a seamless system is a dead giveaway that certain states require the extended time period to craft results they have predetermined to be necessary.

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