Historic Democratic gains deliver House and Senate control
Florida Republican candidates held off several high-profile challenges from Democrats in the 2026 election, according to BBC News. Republican Byron Donalds was projected to win the governor’s race, while Republican Ashley Moody was projected to retain her seat in the U.S. Senate. Donalds’s projected victory would make him Florida’s first Black governor.
BBC News said the Florida results came amid countless and historic gains by Democrats. Those gains gave the party full control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate for the last years of President Donald Trump’s presidency.
Donalds had served in Congress since 2021 before running for governor. He was seeking to replace Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was term limited and could not run again.
President Donald Trump backed Donalds’s campaign, and BBC News described Donalds as a big Trump supporter. Donalds had also been on Trump’s short list to be his 2024 running mate.
Born in Brooklyn, Donalds moved to Florida for university and became a fixture in local politics before running for Congress.
Moody’s Senate contest pitted her against Democrat Angie Nixon in a special election for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s old Senate seat. A caption in the BBC report said Moody had been appointed to fill Rubio’s seat.
Nixon scored a surprise win in the Democratic primary to become her party’s standard-bearer. Her campaign funding could not match Moody’s.
Democrats in Florida also had surprise wins. Republicans in the state had helped redraw political voting maps as part of a national redistricting push to boost each political party’s chances of taking seats in the House.
In all three districts redrawn to help Republicans, Democrats held onto their seats.
Florida’s projected results combined the state’s first Black governorship with projected Republican wins in the governor’s and Senate races and Democratic holds in all three redrawn House districts.