Amid conservative outrage about New York City’s new Mayor and clashes over immigration enforcement, Gov. Ron DeSantis says Florida’s success is partially to blame for other parts of the country becoming more liberal.
As he has before, DeSantis told Fox News Host Sean Hannity that the migration of right-of-center voters to Florida has had the unintended consequence of entrenching liberals in places where people fleeing Democratic governance are leaving.
“California never used to lose population. Now they do. And so what happens is those typically tend to be the more center-right voters, right? So the remaining electorate ends up being even more liberal,” DeSantis said on “Hannity.”
“I think we saw that in New York City with the election of that Mayor. And unfortunately, in Minnesota, I can tell you firsthand, you go down to Southwest Florida right now, Sean, there’s a lot of people who fled Minnesota to be down in Naples and Fort Myers and some of those areas.”
DeSantis was contrasting Florida’s seamless collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to that of Govs. Gavin Newsom and Tim Walz during the segment, the latest evidence that ideological polarity continues.
After 2025’s off-year elections, DeSantis argued that a contributing factor to Republican defeats is that many of those who might have voted for conservative candidates have moved to Florida.
“If you look at all 49 other states since I’ve been Governor, look at who’s migrated to Florida. All 49, more Republicans have moved to Florida than Democrats — Vermont, New York, Illinois, you name it. And the result of that is not just migration, ’cause we’ve had a lot of people shift within Florida. But when I got elected, we had 300,000 more registered Democrats in Florida. Today, we have 1.4 million more Republicans,” DeSantis said, also on “Hannity.”
“Center right voters … leave,” he said during that November interview, and “the resulting electorate is actually more liberal.”
DeSantis has also warned that Florida may be prone to going more purple this year, including suggesting this week that Republicans need to back a single, easily marketable amendment to eliminate homestead property taxes and that a Special Session may be a good way to unify the party and “juice” turnout in November. If Republicans fail to do this, it could jeopardize the supermajority in the Florida House.
