The state of Florida, located on the east coast of the United States, has elected this Tuesday the conservative Byron Donalds, until now a member of the House of Representatives, as the successor to Ron DeSantis, who was unable to run for a third term. With this result, the territory reinforces its role as a Republican stronghold amid a period of sharp setback for the party in midterm elections.
According to projections from major U.S. media outlets, the Republican candidate has obtained around 50% of the vote, leading by 1.3 points and about 100,000 votes over the Democrat David Jolly. With this victory, Donalds also becomes the first Black governor in the history of Florida.
The Republican politician burst onto the electoral contest months ago backed by the president, Donald Trump, and has managed to guarantee the continuity of conservative rule in a state that the Republican Party has controlled since 1999, in contrast to the defeats suffered in other key territories such as Texas or Georgia. This setback, together with the re-election of a Democratic governor in California, leaves Florida as the only one of the ten most populous states that remains under Republican government.
These elections also mark the end of Ron DeSantis’s term, a governor of considerable weight within the party who came to present himself for the Republican primaries for the 2024 presidential election after facing Donald Trump politically, although he ultimately withdrew from the race and ended up endorsing the New York magnate.
In several messages published on social networks, the outgoing governor has lamented the loss of Republican influence in very populous states that it had traditionally controlled, such as Texas, and he has said that this setback means “eliminating one of the pillars of the modern Republican Party” with reference to that territory.
DeSantis has also added that the scale of the Republican defeat will jeopardize the future of the party, warning that it will be difficult for the party to regain control of the House in 2028 and that it will not see real options for recovering control of the Senate until 2032, in view of the advantage achieved by the Democrats at the polls this Tuesday.