#elections-2024

#elections-2024

A new poll with some very optimistic numbers for Florida Democrats isn't necessarily a crystal ball for how Election Day will play out this November, but it does provide a strategy blueprint for how the candidates can find a path to victory. Republicans have had near-total majority control of the Sunshine State since the 1990s. Rare exceptions include former Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who lost his seat to Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) in 2018, and Nikki Fried, the current chair of the Florida Democratic Party who was elected Agriculture Commissioner in 2018 and served one term before an unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 2022.

As the visibility of LGBTQ+ people has risen in many countries in the last decade, so too has a backlash from conservative parts of societies, fuelled in many cases by far-right activists and politicians using gay and transgender people as scapegoats for other problems. There is a growing weaponisation of hate, said Alberto de Belaunde, a director at Outright International, an NGO that promotes LGBTQ+ rights globally.