GOP Reaps Rewards of Party Switchers

Is ideology or opportunism driving the realignment?

Somehow things keep getting worse for Florida Democrats. If Harris’s 13-point thrashing in November wasn’t bad enough, December brought another twist of the knife: two members of the State House switched their party affiliation to Republican, dropping Democrats further into a superminority in the state government.

Though both had just been elected as Democrats a month earlier, Reps. Susan Valdes (HD-64) and Hillary Cassel (HD-101) ditched the blue team and signed on with Republicans. The GOP now controls 85 of Florida’s 120 State House seats and 28 of 40 State Senate seats—a shocking transformation for a state that was a true toss-up just six years ago. Cassel, in particular, made headlines with her statement. Her announcement on Twitter/X hit nearly 10 million views, and Trump congratulated her in a Truth Social post. Democrats, meanwhile, were furious.

Party switchers tend to be a strong (if somewhat lagging) indicator of the health of a party’s brand. And unsurprisingly, Florida Democrats are hovering near rock bottom. After Obama’s 2008 win, some felt the Sunshine State would cement itself in the Democratic column—the crown jewel in a diverse coalition that would last decades. Not quite! Yet while Florida’s rightward sprint is new, Republicans dominating the tally of “party switchers” is not.

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In all but two years since 2010, more legislators have switched from Democrat to Republican than from Republican to Democrat. As you might expect, the number of party switchers closely tracks the prevailing political mood. Republicans dominated the back half of Obama’s first term, Democrats briefly pulled ahead during 2018’s blue wave, and in recent years, Republicans are once again on top. In 2024, Republicans claimed more than five party switchers for the first time since 2011—yet another data point in favor of the conservative “vibe shift.”

Though both heralded new political moments, the Tea Party-era switches and the MAGA-era switches were driven by different motivations. The early Obama years marked the end of a decades-long political realignment in the Deep South. Conservative Southern Democrats—some of whom were first elected when the GOP was functionally nonexistent in their states—had for decades coasted on their local brands and residual party loyalty. By 2010, however, blood was in the water. No matter their ideology or vote history, the “D” next to their name was a scarlet letter.

Most of these conservative Democrats went down with the ship. Giants of the House like Mississippi’s Gene Taylor, Missouri’s Ike Skelton, and South Carolina’s John Spratt all lost in 2010 after decades of easy reelection. At the state legislature level, however, a bunch of conservatives opted to switch parties. An opportunistic decision? Sure. But many of these legislators simply better aligned with the Republican Party—they were pro-life, fiscal conservatives who despised the Affordable Care Act long before they switched teams. Most didn’t endorse Obama in 2008.

Jerry Fielding, an Alabama State Senator who switched parties during Obama’s first term, said, “For a long time, us Southern Democrats could disassociate ourselves from those liberal things that happened in Washington, D.C….People now believe if you are a Democrat, you are the same here as you are in Washington, D.C.” Fielding was not alone in his sentiments. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is now the junior Senator from Mississippi, was a Democrat until 2010. When announcing her party switch, she quipped, “We’re not going to have to bring out any smelling salts for anyone”—she was already voting like a conservative, the registration change was essentially a formality.

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Today’s party switches look shallower in comparison. The electoral incentives are similar: Valdes’s and Cassel’s districts have both rocketed rightwards in recent years. In 2016, Hillary Clinton carried their districts by 30 and 23 points, respectively. In 2024, Trump won both. But the ideological component that drove the Southern switches is missing.

Neither Valdes or Cassel are particularly conservative at all. In fact, both voted like regular mainstream Democrats right up until their party switch. Florida politics guru Matthew Isbell notes that Cassel had been a “vocal opponent” of restrictions on transgender care and pushed back on abortion restrictions. “To say that Cassel’s public posture NEVER pointed toward a Republican switch is an understatement,” he writes.

In her December announcement, Cassel highlighted left-wing antisemitism as the primary reason she was ditching the Democrats. I don’t dispute the rise of antisemitism in left-wing spaces—it is a huge problem, particularly among younger Americans. But Cassel ran for reelection as a Democrat in November 2024! Her revelation happened only after Trump romped to victory across Florida. Convenient timing to say the least.

Regardless of personal motivations, we are watching the long, slow death of the Florida Democrats. Recent party switches are just another nail in the coffin. The policy consequences could be huge—how will future Democratic administrations approach Cuba, for example? The electoral calculus changes too. With Florida out of reach, will Democrats double-down on the Midwest? Try to claw their way back in Texas? Expanding the playing field will be crucial to the party’s long-term prospects.

Southern party switching in the Obama years made sense: conservative legislators joined the conservative party. Recent party switchers have been more transparently opportunistic—akin to swapping jerseys in the 9th inning with your team down five runs. Democrats have every right to be upset.

But we shouldn’t miss the forest for the trees. Valdes and Cassel are symptoms of a larger problem: Democrats have collapsed in places they used to carry comfortably. The road back is not shaming self-interested legislators, but winning back the thousands of voters who prompted them to consider a party switch in the first place.