Sun-Sentinel: “Immediately after Donald Trump supporters went on a rampage through the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block counting of the electoral votes that confirmed Joe Biden’s presidential victory, people responded 1,000 miles away in South Florida. Within hours, voters began leaving the GOP. Within weeks, thousands of South Florida Republicans changed their voter registrations. Voter registration data show the surge was real. But six months later, something else is clear from registration data analyzed by the South Florida Sun Sentinel: It didn’t last.”

“By the end of January, some 6,270 Republicans in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties left the party. Republicans left their party at more than five times the rate of Democrats. It was even more pronounced in the immediate aftermath of the violence in Washington, D.C. In the first day and a half, more than seven times as many Republicans as Democrats changed their party registrations in Miami-Dade County. The ratio of Republican to Democratic switches was almost as high in Palm Beach County. In Broward, the most Democratic of the three counties, it wasn’t as lopsided. By themselves, the numbers don’t show the outsized nature of the defection from the Republicans because the base of Democrats is so much larger in the three counties. But the percentage of Republican defections was higher. In the three counties combined, 0.63% of registered Republicans left the party in January; 0.12% of Democrats left that month.”