Florida Republicans Will Likely Have a Winner-Take-All Presidential Primary in 2024

But it may be more complicated than just that

Earlier this month there was a new Republican presidential primary poll out of Florida. The results are not necessarily important at this point, a little less than eleven months out from the presidential primary in the Sunshine state. Nonetheless, FHQ was on the cusp of one of those tweets — if one follows FHQ, then one knows the type — where I talk about delegate allocation based on the poll results. Quickly, however, I held back.

“Florida is winner-take-all,” I said to myself.

And it is, or is likely to be in 2024. [The rules are not officially set yet.] But there is little instructive value in pointing out that the candidate with the most votes — or in this case, the most polling support in any given poll — would win all of the delegates from Florida. Well, that is not true. In this particular instance, in this Victory Insights survey, former President Donald Trump pulled in nearly 43 percent in a six-way race, more than eight percentage points ahead of current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Again, the specific numbers are not important right now, but the fact that Trump could take just more than 100 delegates from the Sunshine state primary with a mere plurality of the vote is a fact that is not without some value.

After all, that is what then-candidate Trump did in the Sunshine state in 2016. He left Florida in mid-March, having taken around 45 percent of the vote, with a net 99 delegate advantage. It is that sort of net delegate gain that makes nominees ( if said candidate wins more than just that state).

And that would be true for Trump in 2024 if he were to win in Florida again. But that is only part of the equation.