Florida Republicans hold every statewide seat, but margins shrink to single digits

A narrower Florida than the usual red map suggests

Florida’s statewide Republicans swept every top-of-the-ballot race in the 2026 midterm, but none of them won by more than 3 percentage points, according to a county-by-county analysis published by the Tampa Bay Times. The paper describes the overall national environment as closer to a “blue tsunami” than a routine midterm wave, and says Florida Republicans avoided drowning in it, rather than coasting through it.

More than 8.3 million Floridians voted, close to 61 percent of the state’s active registered voters. Registered Republicans cast more ballots in raw numbers, about 3.5 million to Democrats’ 2.8 million, but Democratic voters turned out at a higher rate relative to their registration totals, a gap the Times frames as a measure of comparative enthusiasm rather than raw party strength.

The statewide ballot

Every statewide Republican nominee won, each by a narrow single-digit margin, per the Times tally:

• Governor: Byron Donalds (R) over David Jolly (D)
• U.S. Senate: Ashley Moody (R) over Angie Nixon (D)
• Chief Financial Officer: Blaise Ingoglia (R) over Annette Taddeo (D)
• Attorney General: James Uthmeier (R) over José Javier Rodriguez (D)
• Agriculture Commissioner: Wilton Simpson (R) over Joey Mendoza Atkins (D)

Where Florida shifted since 2024

The Times compared the governor’s race to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential performance county by county. Byron Donalds underperformed Trump’s 2024 margin in nearly every Florida county, Sumter County, home to The Villages, was the lone exception where Donalds held or exceeded Trump’s share.

The steepest Democratic swings landed well outside the Nature Coast: Hendry County shifted 26.4 points toward Democrats compared with 2024, followed by Hardee County at 22.5 points and Osceola County at 19.2 points. In the Tampa Bay region, Republicans made up a smaller share of the voting electorate in both Hillsborough and Pinellas counties than they did four years earlier.

What the source does not show for this coast

The Times’ published breakdown does not include a specific vote count, turnout figure or partisan shift for Levy County or Cedar Key. The county-level data cited above covers Sumter, Hendry, Hardee and Osceola counties, along with the Tampa Bay counties of Hillsborough and Pinellas, Levy County is not among the counties detailed in the source material reviewed for this report.

Why it still matters here

Even without county-specific numbers for Levy, the statewide results carry direct consequences for this coast. The governor, attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner all hold authority over decisions that regularly reach Cedar Key and the Nature Coast, from water-management and environmental permitting disputes that run through the governor’s office and the Department of Environmental Protection, to agricultural and aquaculture regulation under the Commissioner of Agriculture, to legal challenges handled through the Attorney General’s office. The narrow statewide margins reported by the Times suggest those offices will be held by the same party as before, but with less room to spare than in recent cycles.

Florida & Cedar Key News will report separately if and when county-level results specific to Levy County become available through the Florida Division of Elections or the Levy County Supervisor of Elections.