What can you tell us about them? What do we know about them?

Right, yes, and it's actually out this morning.

It's on now.

We took a look at all the people, active voter registrants, that have changed parties since January through the end of August.

And we find some very, very interesting things.

Obviously, in terms of who's switching, if a person left either the Democrat or Republican major parties, they were much more likely to choose NPA status than to switch over to the other side.

So, for example, if I'm a Democrat and I want to switch to Republican, but that's less likely that I would change to parties than to go to NPAs.

Give us an overview of why that's so dangerous when you talk about the Hispanic vote or the black vote here in Florida as like a monolithic block.

What was your take on that decision from, from a political standpoint, from a, a campaign strategy standpoint?

I was surprised because it was a great chance for him to introduce himself to a lot of Floridians that didn't know he was running or don't much about him.

And it is traditional that for, uh, an office at that level, a governor or s- a senator, but a governor in particular, not to wanna debate, it did cause a lot of people to scratch their heads and wonder why.

And even more curious is the fact that he's, uh, appealing a lot for the, from the National Party for more money to campaign in Florida to better improve his chances of winning.

So the debates always give you a chance to introduce yourself to voters and energize voters.

At the same time, increasingly, the candidates worry about that one viral misstep-

Do you think the president will have a big presence here in this state, and do you think that, uh, candidates in some tight races will want him to come and help them out?

V- very different opinions, depending upon the candidate.

Just how new is the scarcity of debates? Like what is the timeline of debates falling out of favor as a tool for these campaigns?

It's beginning like the 2016, 18, 20 years.

It's been ongoing, it's just picking up speed everywhere.

Some of it has to do with people are just not interested in politics.

We have the lowest number of people at the moment that are really following it.

A lot of people just also don't trust the candidates and they don't like their ads.

We're in a moment, a really unique moment right now where there's terrific distrust in government, the media, politicians, high-tech billionaires, it's yielding a lot of questions about what turnout's gonna look like.

This is part of a product is that politicians are much more accessible, say, on a smartphone than they are in a three-hour televised cable news debate.

But he can't alienate the very constituents that she energized that led to her win.

And on top of that, she has another asset that she brings, and that is she is able to to reach into that large pool of no party affiliation.

NPA is a large portion of whom are young.

She brings the energy and the fighting fire spirit.

She will be the Democratic candidate that has the best shot at bringing those people to the polls, and Democrats are going to have to have a large share of that vote.

As for Jolly, he absolutely cannot... look like he's not wanting to be on the same stage with her or any kind of look that he's trying to distance himself and talk about it one way, but, you know, not appear with her on stages and so forth.

He's walking a very fine line because he's very well aware of the fact that, you know, he also needs the strong Latino vote in South Florida and in Central Florida, especially the Orlando area.

What will you be watching for from him?

we're joined by retired usf political scientist dr susan mcmanus what are some of the most interesting races in this primary election that you've been following

Well, let's start right off with the two that are most interesting for each party.

Let's start with the Republicans, and certainly it's the governor's race.

Quite a race, you have a whole bunch of things entering into people's equation.

You've got one endorsed right off the bat by Trump.

You've got others that have been sort of mentioned as possibilities of somebody good to vote for by DeSantis.

And you've got candidates like the lieutenant governor who feel that they should have a good shot because they've been number two in the governor's race under DeSantis.

What about on the Democratic side of the aisle?

Mm-hmm.

Uh, so that was one of the things you saw really happening.

But a second one was, and this is very important going to our special election ones, a second really big complaint, uh, among Democrats of Florida and, and a lot of party activists was the outside consultants that were sent into Florida to campaign for Florida candidates.

And we had a lot of complaints from local party people that said the people they sent in didn't know anything about the area or whatever else.

A huge shift in the special election Mar-a-Lago and the one here in Tampa, you saw a totally different approach.

Localized approach, local experts instead of outside experts.

What improved then for Democrats? Two things.

When you take a step back and you look at all of this together, are these Democratic wins sort of early warning signs for Republicans heading into the midterms? Are they just a temporary blip in a state that still leans red as it were? Uh, what, what do you think?