It was once a state coveted, even crucial for presidential candidates on their path to the White House, but Tuesday’s results and recent trends show Florida is far from the purple, battleground state it once was, “We've seen the state of Florida go from blue to purple to a darker purple, but now it's ruby red. Last night was a true indication of that,” 10 Tampa Bay political analyst Dr. Lars Hafner said. From battleground to conservative breeding ground, Republicans saw major wins across the state, flipping historically blue and swing areas along the I-4 corridor to solid red. President-elect Donald Trump won the state by 13%, quadrupling his 2020 margin of victory in the state over President Biden. “Other than Trump winning the state, the other race to have watched was the Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) race. Rick Scott has never won by more than a handful of votes when he ran twice for governor and the first time for Senate, and last night, he won by over 1 million votes,” Hafner said. "That kind of tells you that the state of Florida has trended totally to the Republican Party.” A similar result was seen in the 2022 midterm when Gov. Ron DeSantis won his reelection in a 19-point blowout over former governor and Congressman Charlie Christ. “We didn't know whether the DeSantis victory was an anomaly because he was running against the tired, underfunded candidate and really blew him out of the water. So you have to watch a couple elections after that to see where the trends are,” added Hafner who says the latest election cements Florida as a red state. How the state got here is seen both on the map and the voter rolls. In 2017, there were ~300,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Now Republicans outnumber Dems by ~1,000,000. “That movement from down 300 to becoming a million today began because of COVID restrictions in the northeast,” Tom Gaitens, state committeeman for the Hillsborough County Republican Party, said. Gaitens says how DeSantis navigated COVID shortly after his first election expedited the pendulum swing, bringing in new Floridians and Republican voters. “We've always used the moniker 'the Free State of Florida,' and that truly has been the mechanism that's been the magnetism, that's been the aphrodisiac for voters to come here,” Gaitens added. While he wasn’t on the ballot himself after dropping out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination, the governor picked up a pair of victories on Tuesday. Experts say he took a political risk by putting his voice (and controversially) state resources behind a campaign against ballot measures for marijuana and abortion rights. The last several weeks saw the governor crisscrossing the state speaking against both proposed constitutional amendments. MORE: https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/hillsboroughcounty/election-florida-red-state-desantis-swing-state/67-bb70bac7-4593-4822-a8e4-e8cb064fca5e