Bigger Collapse: 1990s Texas Democrats or 2012-2022 Florida Democrats

For me, it's obviously the 1990s Texas Democrats.

In 1994, the Texas Democrats held just about all statewide offices including the key ones like Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, along with controlling the state legislature. It was still in many ways a Democratic state at state level (although clearly a GOP state at federal level).

By 1998, George W. Bush was being reelected Governor with nearly 70% of the vote and the GOP won just about all the statewide offices, and by 2002 the GOP had taken the legislature. The Democrats never again won a statewide election after 1994.

While in Florida, I think the final straw was 2018 with Gillum and Nelson losing, but the Florida Democrats were already showing signs of serious decay by 1994. Chiles at that point I believe had approval ratings similar to George W. Bush c. 2008, and was only reelected because Jeb Bush made some unforced errors and probably had too rightwing of a campaign, even for Florida standards of the time. But that was the last time Florida Democrats ever won the Governorship. And even when you look at Senators, the only people who have won since were Bob Graham (who was reelected in 1998 by virtue of being Bob Graham, probably the most popular politician in Florida history) and Bill Nelson, who especially won by virtue of facing 3 pretty weak GOP opponents, and finally lost once the GOP ran a half decent candidate against him.

The Florida Democratic Party's collapse was a slow one, that took at least a quarter of a century to complete. While the Texas Democrats collapsed in a matter of like 4 years.

And I think the key reason for this was especially that the Texas GOP was much more efficient than the Florida GOP. George W. Bush made the Texas GOP the big tent Texas Party, not unsimilar to the Alberta PCs. While the Florida GOP ran weaker candidates and did not seize this opportunity until they finally got a similar quality leader in Ron DeSantis and the Florida Democrats had finally alienated enough people.

Had George W. Bush not become leader of the Texas GOP in 1994, Texas would have probably stayed competitive until at least about 2010, and may well still be competitive today.

And had the Florida GOP had similar quality leadership and candidates to what the Texas GOP had, they may have been able to make the Florida GOP dominant except for whenever Bob Graham would run as early as the 1990s, rather than still having Democratic Senators/State Cabinet officials still being elected as late as 2012.

And on top of that, I think the Florida Democrats did a lot of the work for the Florida GOP in a way the Texas Democrats didn't for the Texas GOP. The Texas GOP took over the state quite quickly pretty much all due to the popularity of George W. Bush. The Texas Democrats still understood that Texas was a Southern state and that they had to appeal to moderate and conservative voters, and kept this understanding until they had become the long term minority party.

While the Florida Democrats would probably still be in pretty good shape if they were running like even North Carolina Democrats. However, after the turn of the millenium, they basically decided that they were going to pretend Florida wasn't a Southern state and they were going to run as if it was New York or California, and were simply way to liberal for a state like Florida. And really the only reason it was still close After that point was because the GOP wasn't necessarily running their best either (with the exception of post-1994 Jeb). But once the GOP finally started running candidates that appealled to most Floridians, and the Democrats had permanently moved to being New York Democrats, that's when the dam broke once and for all.

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