Donald Trump is no stranger to misleading with stats, making up stats and, of course, misleading with made-up stats.
His favorite talking point about his and Ron DeSantis’s relative electoral strength in Florida is very much in the last category.
The 2022 election left Trump electorally bruised and DeSantis smelling like roses after a 19-point reelection win. This was a problem given the two were set to face off in 2024, so Trump set about deploying a stat purportedly calling into question DeSantis’s superior electability.
“[S]houldn’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 on Truth Social on Nov. 9.
By February, the claim was adjusted upward, with Trump claiming he “got 1.2 Million Votes MORE than Ron DeSanctimonious in the Great State of Florida.”
At a dinner in Florida in April: “We did much better in 2020 in Florida. I got 1.2 million more votes than your successful governor’s campaign.”
Two weeks ago: “I got 1.2 million more votes than he did.”
Last week: “I got 1.2 Million more votes in Florida than DeSanctus.”
And this week: “p.s. I got 1.2 Million more votes in Florida than Ron, a little reported fact!”
It’s little reported because it’s not a fact. But more than that, to the extent it’s notionally true, it’s entirely misleading, and it doesn’t reflect nearly as well upon Trump as he’d have his supporters believe.
Trump in the 2020 election in Florida received 5,668,731 votes. DeSantis in the 2022 election in Florida received 4,614,210 votes. That is a difference of about 1.055 million votes, which is less than 1.2 million. Even if you’re rounding up for Trump and down for DeSantis, the difference is 1.1 million.
But that difference is wholly unsurprising. Why? Because, of course, voter turnout is higher in presidential elections. Virtually every presidential nominee will get significantly more votes than a gubernatorial candidate running in a midterm two years before or after, because lots more people are voting. Trump’s edge sounds like a lot because there are a lot of people and a lot of voters in Florida.
For example, while Trump had 1.055 million more votes than DeSantis, President Biden actually won 2.2 million more votes than DeSantis’s Democratic opponent in 2022, Charlie Crist — 5.3 million to 3.1 million.
And even if you somehow ignore that Trump’s four-point margin in the state came up well shy of DeSantis’s 19-point margin two years later, Trump’s raw-vote edge is rather underwhelming.
The state had about 10 million registered voters during the 2022 election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That means that Trump’s raw-vote edge on DeSantis accounts for about 10.8 percent of voters there.
That 10.8 percent actually ranks on the low end of all of Trump’s raw-vote edges on 2022 gubernatorial candidates. Among competitive states, it was lower than Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Texas, Minnesota, Arizona and Iowa. It was higher only than Wisconsin, Ohio, Georgia and New Hampshire.
What do those latter three states have in common with Florida? A highly popular Republican governor who hasn’t exactly aligned with Trump — and, not coincidentally, did much better than he did.
Of course, this isn’t really about winning the argument with facts or making a cogent, logical case. As it almost always is with Trump, it’s about muddying the waters — this time regarding what is arguably DeSantis’s best argument for securing the 2024 GOP nomination: electability. And right now, Trump is succeeding in doing that.