Fact Check: Did Donald Trump Get 1.1M More Votes in Florida Than DeSantis?
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Trump Mocks Ron DeSantis With New Nickname During Pennsylvania Rally
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UP NEXT
Donald Trump has gone on the offensive as many blame him for the Republican Party’s poor performance in the midterm election.
Two days after the November 8 polls opened, the GOP has still not won enough races to secure a majority in the House as expected, although it is still expected to push past the 218-seat threshold.
The GOP could also fail to retake control of the Senate, with the Georgia run-off election between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in December looking like it could once again decide which party ultimately rules the upper chamber.
Following the GOP’s performance, a number of conservative figures, media companies and even those within the GOP pointed the finger at the former president.
Trump had endorsed hundreds of candidates across all forms of government in the midterm elections, many of whom backed his MAGA agenda, as well as supported the false claim the 2020 Election was rigged.
As a number of these Trump–backed figures went on to lose their respective elections, resulting in suggestions that the 76-year-old is no longer the de-facto leader of the GOP, and that the party is now ready to fully embrace Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ahead of the 2024 election.
Trump, who once considered DeSantis a key ally in the GOP, has turned on the Florida Governor in recent months, publicly dismissing all suggestions that he would beat him in a hypothetical GOP primary matchup for the next presidential candidacy.
On the eve of the November 8 elections, Trump also suggested that DeSantis “could hurt himself badly” if the Governor faced off against him for the 2024 presidency, telling Fox News: “I think the base would not like it. I don’t think it would be good for the party.”
The Claim
While continuing to dismiss any suggestion that DeSantis is the one who should now lead the GOP, Trump noted that he achieved more votes than the Florida governor in the Sunshine State.
“Now that the Election in Florida is over, and everything went quite well, shouldn’t it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million? Just asking?” Trump wrote in Truth Social on November 9.
The Facts
Florida was one of the states in which Trump beat Joe Biden in 2020, an election the Republican went on to lose overall.
According to The New York Times, Trump achieved 5,668,731 votes in the 2020 Election (51.2 percent), with Biden behind on 5,297,045 (47.9 percent.)
In the 2022 midterm election, DeSantis easily cruised to re-election ahead of Democrat challenger Charlie Christ by a margin of nearly 20 percentage points.
The Times and The Washington Post’s tallies put DeSantis at 4,609,110 votes, with Crist more than 1.5 million behind with a total ballot count of 3,102,136.
This means that the total number of votes between Trump’s 2020 count in Florida and DeSantis’ 2022 midterm tally is 1,059,621, which is technically slightly less than Trump claims.
Rounding up to two digits, 5.7 for Trump and 4.6 million for DeSantis, does however result in the 1.1 million advantage touted by Trump.
One significant caveat for this comparison, however, is that voter turnout in presidential elections is typically higher than in the midterms. The last time midterm turnout exceeded the previous presidential election was in 1838, according to University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Only about half of eligible voters took part in Florida’s 2014 gubernatorial election, and about 62 percent in 2018. Though votes are still being counted in these midterms (which could reduce the gap Trump referenced), the current estimated turnout is around 60 percent.
By contrast, 77 percent of Floridians took part in the 2020 presidential election, and around 75 percent four years prior.
The Ruling
True.
Although Trump did round his 2020 figure up to the nearest hundred thousand and rounded DeSantis’ 2022 figure down slightly, it is fair to state that the former president beat the Florida governor by around 1.1 million, if both figures are rounded off to two digits.
However, it is worth pointing out for balance that turnout during midterms has almost always been lower than in presidential races.
FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK
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