It’s common to see comments now on social media that “Republicans are sacrificing the lives of their voters so they can complain about the number of Covid deaths under Biden,” and those comments are the result of data such as a study published in October by NPR which found that “…the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth…,” Those figures spell major trouble for Florida’s failed Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Worldometers.info reports that Florida has already suffered over 62,000 deaths from Coronavirus, and that’s just the number that’s publicly reported. It is widely believed that DeSantis has been manipulating Covid19 data, and the actual death toll may be far higher. Even in “blue” counties such as Miami-Dade, Covid appears to be hitting hardest in Republican enclaves, such as the Miami Cuban Community.

The problem for DeSantis becomes apparent with a brief review of the numbers. In the 2018 Governor’s race DeSantis beat his Democratic opponent by less than 33,000 votes. Florida’s huge surge in Covid19 deaths occurred in late summer of 2021, after multiple coronavirus vaccines had already become available, and after the trend of red counties having higher mortality rates became visible in the data. Studies by organizations such as the Brookings Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation have found that political party affiliation is now the number one predictor of whether someone is vaccinated or not. Data from the Kaiser study shows that as of October of 2021, the percentage of unvaccinated for Democrats and Independents was only 17%, while for Republicans it was 40%.

From early to mid December, many articles claimed that the Covid19 – Omicron variant was less severe than earlier Covid19 strains. However, studies published in the last few days are now claiming those earlier studies were flawed, because they had a sample that included people who were engaged in international travel, and who were almost all vaccinated or who had not been properly screened to determine if they had some degree of protection against Covid due to prior infection, and that individuals who are not either vaccinated, or protected by natural immunity from prior infection, can still become very ill from the Omicron variant.

What this ultimately means is that it’s very likely that many of the voters who supported DeSantis in 2018 are now dead. Add in the increasingly senile and irate nature of the former guy’s rants, leading to a decline in his ability to motivate Republican voters, Republicans and independents who have become disillusioned with the GOP over the events of January 6th, and the fact that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy cannot get away with manipulating mail service and disappearing mail in ballots the same way that he did during the Trump administration, and Republican prospects in statewide Florida elections appear drastically diminished as a result of the Republican Party’s failed response to Covid19.