Florida voters began choosing nominees for governor on Tuesday in a primary that will determine who succeeds the term-limited Ron DeSantis, with early returns showing Trump-endorsed Republican Byron Donalds building a substantial lead over his nearest GOP rival while former Republican congressman David Jolly emerged as the frontrunner on the Democratic side.
With a small fraction of precincts reporting, Donalds held roughly 54 per cent of the Republican vote, according to results published by WJXT, well ahead of Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins on about 25 per cent, with James Fishback and Paul Renner trailing further back at around 6 per cent apiece. On the Democratic side, Jolly was leading with close to half the vote, ahead of a six-candidate field that included state Representative Dotie Joseph and businesswoman Dayna Foster.
The primary caps a bruising, months-long campaign to succeed DeSantis, whose eight years in office reshaped Florida’s politics and pulled the state firmly into the Republican column after decades as a premier presidential battleground. Because DeSantis is barred by the state constitution from seeking a third consecutive term, Tuesday’s vote represents the first genuinely open race for the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee since 2018.
Florida Governor Race 2026: Why Does This Race Matter Beyond Florida?
Florida’s gubernatorial contest carries significance well beyond the state’s borders. It will decide the political direction of the country’s third-largest state at a moment when its Republican-controlled government has become a national testing ground for conservative policy on education, immigration and abortion. It also serves as an early gauge of US President Donald Trump’s political capital heading into the November midterms, given his early and decisive endorsement of Donalds.
Ashley Moody, the incumbent Republican senator who was appointed by DeSantis to fill Marco Rubio’s vacated seat after Rubio joined the Trump administration, faced only token opposition on Tuesday as she sought to win a full term in her own right. Her eventual Democratic opponent in November will be either state Representative Angie Nixon or retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the former National Security Council official who testified during Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.
Florida’s Republican trifecta, control of the governorship and both chambers of the legislature, has held for more than two decades, and the state has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2018. Trump carried Florida by 13 percentage points in 2024, a margin that underscores the scale of the challenge facing Democrats as they attempt to regain relevance in a state that only a decade ago was considered the nation’s premier swing territory.
Florida Governor Race 2026: How Did Byron Donalds Become the Republican Frontrunner?
Donalds, a 46-year-old congressman from Naples who was born and raised in Brooklyn, entered the race in March with an immediate and decisive advantage: the backing of US President Donald Trump. That endorsement effectively froze much of the Republican donor base behind his candidacy and left rival campaigns struggling to raise comparable sums. Campaign finance filings showed Donalds had amassed roughly $10.2 million in the most recent quarter alone, dwarfing the fundraising of his Republican challengers.
“I’m fully focused on helping President Trump pass his America First Agenda. Florida will proudly lead the way,” Donalds told reporters after news of his candidacy first surfaced.
Donalds’ relationship with DeSantis has been notably frosty throughout the campaign. The rift traces back to the 2024 Republican presidential primary, when Donalds broke with the sitting governor to endorse Trump instead, a decision he later described as the source of a “parting of the ways” between the two men.
DeSantis has pointedly withheld his endorsement from Donalds, and speculation persisted for months that the governor’s wife, First Lady Casey DeSantis, might enter the race herself as an alternative standard-bearer for his political legacy. She ultimately opted against a run, according to people familiar with her deliberations.
Anthony Pedicini, a Republican strategist based in Florida, said Donalds had calculated correctly by avoiding open conflict with the popular governor even as tensions simmered beneath the surface.
“You have no one running against you. You’re not running against Ron DeSantis, he can’t run anymore,” Pedicini said, describing the approach as a “smart tactic” rather than an attempt to “start a range war with a beloved governor in the state.”
Collins, the lieutenant governor and a decorated Special Forces veteran who was awarded the Purple Heart, positioned himself throughout the campaign as the candidate most likely to safeguard DeSantis’s record in office, launching his bid in January with the message that “leadership is forged under pressure, not with catchy phrases.” Renner, a former state House speaker and Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, entered the race in September as the second prominent Republican to challenge Donalds, framing his own two years leading the chamber as among “the two most conservative years in Florida history.”
Fishback, a businessman and self-described “constitutional conservative,” survived a legal challenge from Collins’s campaign questioning his residency eligibility before a judge ruled he could remain on the ballot.
Florida Governor Race 2026: Who Emerged to Lead the Democratic Field?
On the Democratic side, the primary turned into a two-tier contest dominated by Jolly, a 52-year-old former one-term Republican congressman from Pinellas County who left the GOP in 2018 over his opposition to Trump before formally registering as a Democrat last year. His candidacy drew immediate comparisons to Charlie Crist, another Republican-turned-Democrat who lost badly to DeSantis in 2022, a parallel that Florida Republicans have been eager to reinforce.
“No matter the issue, David Jolly has been on all sides of it,” Florida Republican Party chairman Evan Power said in a statement issued when Jolly first signalled his intention to run. “Floridians won’t be swayed. Under Republican leadership, Florida enjoys low inflation, fiscal responsibility, and a thriving economy.”
Jolly has rejected the comparison to Crist and cast his campaign as a response to what he describes as a deepening affordability crisis gripping the state. “In Florida we are in the midst of a generational affordability crisis,” Jolly said in an interview after formally entering the race. “The affordability crisis is number one on the minds of every Floridian. Wherever you live, whatever your socioeconomic status, whatever your party registration, the affordability crisis is number one.”
He has centred his platform on lowering housing and property insurance costs, increasing funding for public education and pursuing what he has called new gun safety measures. Jolly’s campaign has also leaned on his growing national profile as a regular commentator on MSNBC, where he has become one of the most visible Republican-turned critics of the president.
Florida Governor Race 2026: What Challenges Do Democrats Face in the General Election?
Even with Jolly poised to secure the Democratic nomination, the party’s path to reclaiming the governor’s mansion remains narrow. Florida’s Republican voter registration advantage now exceeds 1.2 million, a gap that has widened steadily since Andrew Gillum’s narrow loss to DeSantis in 2018, and national Democratic donors have largely redirected their money toward states seen as more competitive. A poll conducted by the James Madison Institute in July showed Donalds leading Jolly by seven points, 45 per cent to 38 per cent, in a hypothetical November matchup.
Jolly has argued that shifting economic conditions could scramble those assumptions. “We will be in every community, building trust and building relationships and building a coalition that will ultimately and successfully win an election where a Democrat hasn’t won in 30 years,” he said, describing the 2026 cycle as a potential “change election.”
Florida last elected a Democratic governor in 1994, when Lawton Chiles won a second term; his lieutenant governor, Kenneth “Buddy” MacKay, briefly completed that term after Chiles died in office, and no Democrat has held the position since.
Florida Governor Race 2026: What Happens Next in the Race to Succeed DeSantis?
With ballot counting continuing across the state’s 67 counties on Tuesday night, both parties were bracing for a general election campaign expected to run through November 3, when Florida voters will make their final choice. DeSantis, who will leave office in January 2027 after eight years that reshaped the state’s political identity, has offered no formal endorsement in the race to succeed him, though allies say he continues to search for a candidate who might carry forward his political legacy more directly than Donalds has offered to.
Whichever candidates ultimately prevail, the contest is widely expected to serve as a proxy battle over the durability of Trump’s influence within the Republican Party and over whether Florida’s rightward drift over the past decade represents a lasting realignment or one that Democrats can still contest given the right political conditions. Full results from Tuesday’s primary were expected to be finalised in the coming days as county election officials complete their counts.
