Florida Republicans cast more than 50 percent of the ballots in the state’s primary elections, buoyed by a surging Election Day turnout.
By 8:45 p.m., Democrats still led turnout in several large counties, including Miami-Dade, which has become more competitive in recent election cycles, with a slight edge in Duval, which had an at-large City Council race on the ballot that a Democrat won outright Tuesday night.
Republicans had an overall vote lead of 430,000 statewide.
Floridians voted for Republican candidate Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly as their party picks for the governor’s race. Trump-endorsed Donalds is widely considered to be the favorite to win in the general election given Florida’s rightward turn in recent election cycles.
State Rep. Angie Nixon from Jacksonville won in the competitive Democratic primary for U.S. Senate with 56% of the vote. She faced off against Alex Vindman, a former National Security Council official and high-profile whistleblower in Trump’s first term. Although Vindman had a decisive fundraising lead and some national profile, Nixon garnered support from progressive leaders in the state.
Voting by mail – once a Republican strength – has declined considerably in Florida this cycle, which experts have attributed to rhetoric from Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly sought to undermine the once-ubiquitous voting method.
Gov. Ron DeSantis likely contributed to that trend by when he signed SB90, a jam-packed bill government oversight and elections bill panned by critics as an “attack” on vote-by-mail. All mailed ballots needed to be in by the 7 p.m.Election Day deadline.
Florida residents don’t historically turn out in droves for primaries, with an average of 24% of voters casting a ballot in these races since 2000. In the last gubernatorial race in 2022, 26% of voters had their say.
The sparsely populated Liberty County, home to Apalachicola National Forest, saw the highest voter turnout with 48% of registered voters heading to the polls. Osceola County was last in voter turnout with 18% participation.
The Florida primaries leave out a significant slice of registered voters.
Florida has a closed primary system, meaning only registered party members can vote for party-affiliated candidates. But across the U.S., more and more voters are dropping their party affiliations. The latest count from the state Division of Elections shows one in four Floridians are registered as independents.
As of 8:45 p.m. only 11% of those voters cast a ballot.
Laura Pellicer, a master’s student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY in New York City, is a 2026 summer fellow with The Florida Trib. You can reach Laura at laura.pellicer@floridatrib.org.
