Florida's general election ballots list Republicans over Democrats.
Why? It's because of a state law. What is its effect? Researchers say it could give those Republicans a boost.
The rule's history
The rule goes back 75 years, when Democrats ran the state, and there were only a few Republicans in the Legislature. In 1951, lawmakers passed a bill saying the top spot goes to the party that won the last governor's race.
But Democrats no longer dominate in Florida.
Since Gov. Ron DeSantis won reelection in 2022, the GOP is listed first on the 2026 ballot. Rick Scott, Charlie Crist and Jeb Bush won as Republicans before that, meaning that ballot ordering has been in place for more than a quarter century.
Democrats tried to fight it.
Multiple national Democratic organizations joined several state voters in 2018 to launch a constitutional challenge against the ballot-ordering provision.
"Candidates of the Governor’s political party receive the benefits of position bias, creating an unfair and artificial electoral advantage," their lawsuit said.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican Governors Association jumped into the litigation to defend the state, questioning the effect of being at the top of the ballot: "Even assuming ... that placement at the top of the ballot gives a candidate an advantage, Florida’s ballot ordering statute imposes only minimal burdens on Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights," they wrote in a motion to throw out the case.
Yet, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled in the Democrats' favor. But an appeals court threw out that ruling in 2020, saying the plaintiffs didn't have legal standing to sue, sued the wrong official and that the case involved "political questions" beyond judicial authority.
Florida's not the only state to go through this kind of legal fight.
In West Virginia, for example, the top ballot spot goes to the party whose presidential candidate won the state in the last election. Democrats sued, and a President Bill Clinton-appointed judge sided with them. But a different federal appeals court also overturned it, though on different legal grounds.
Florida is one of at least a dozen states that determines ballot ordering by political party, according to a 2025 analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Other states use methods like alphabetical order, random drawings or rotating names across ballots in the same election.
The rule's effect
Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University political scientist, has studied ballot ordering for decades. He was an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the Florida and West Virginia cases — and in other states.
He says there's a benefit to being first on the ballot, due to a phenomenon called the primacy effect.
"We see it not only in elections, but we see it in beer tasting, and we see it when people are crossing parking lots and whenever people need to make a choice; they go for the first option that's acceptable to some degree," Krosnick told WUSF.
"Not everybody, there are some people who are beer experts," he continued, "but just tasting that beer first gives that beer a little advantage in the competition."
Krosnick said a lack of information and voter ambivalence contribute to why this happens.
He added the effect can weaken in higher-publicity races, where voters tend to know more about the candidates. However, he said greater publicity can also strengthen the effect, with things like negative campaigning increasing ambivalence.
"If in the end it turns out that the actual margins of victory are narrow, if the Republicans win, then there is every reason to believe that they got two to three percentage points extra due to the primacy effect," Krosnick said.
Darren Grant, an economics professor at Sam Houston State University, has also researched the effect, finding it's particularly pronounced in down-ballot races.
He said it's influenced Florida's recent gubernatorial elections.
Then-Republican Charlie Crist won the governorship in 2006, meaning the next gubernatorial race would have the Republican as the top option. Republican Rick Scott won in 2010 by around 1.2%, and he also snagged reelection by just over a percentage point. Then, in 2018, Gov. Ron DeSantis beat Andrew Gillum by .4%.
With the tight-margined gubernatorial wins, Grant said Crist's win in 2006 played a role in future Republican victories because of the primacy effect, and it ultimately contributed to DeSantis' victory 12 years later. He referred to this as a "hat trick."
"Now to get a bump of 1 or 2 or 3% of the vote in a closely contested general election, that's a lot," he said. "Candidates would spend millions of dollars in advertising to try to get a bump of one or two percentage points in the vote."
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This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
