Democrats took the House and flipped Senate seats in both Carolinas and Texas. Florida, the state that used to decide presidencies, stayed in the same water it's been in for nearly 30 years.
If you live on the Gulf Coast, you know red tide. You don't see it coming from the beach. You smell it first. Then you see what washes up.
Tuesday night, the rest of the country caught a blue wave. NBC News projects Democrats will win about 248 House seats, their largest majority in nearly two decades. Roy Cooper flipped North Carolina's Senate seat. Annie Andrews flipped South Carolina's. South Carolina. James Talarico flipped Texas's Senate seat, and Gina Hinojosa ousted Gov. Greg Abbott. Texas. Jon Ossoff held Georgia. A historically Republican county in Indiana went blue.
And Florida stayed red.
Byron Donalds beat David Jolly 50.1% to 48.6%, with about 99% of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press. Ashley Moody kept her Senate seat. Democrats hoped to knock off the Cabinet members Ron DeSantis appointed. That didn't happen either.
Credit where it's due: Donalds will be Florida's first Black governor and the first Black Republican elected governor in the country. That's history, and it's worth saying out loud even in a column that disagrees with almost everything he stands for.
Funny thing about Florida's Republican base, though. A lot of the same folks who spent eight years blaming Barack Obama for everything short of the weather are tonight calling Byron Donalds the future of their party. The lesson is an old one. A Black man who stays on their script is welcome. A Black man who speaks up for people the script leaves out, the way Obama did, is the problem. Do what we tell you, and you're good.
That's not new in Florida. From the end of Reconstruction to 1950, this state had the highest per-capita lynching rate in the country, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. This is the state of Rosewood and Ocoee. And in its 2025 count, the Southern Poverty Law Center found more hate groups in Florida than in any other state. Electing a Black governor doesn't erase that. Watch who gets cheered and who gets punished for speaking up, and you'll see how much of it is still here.
But look at the margin. About a point and a half. Rick Scott won by about a point in 2010 and again in 2014. DeSantis won by less than a point in 2018. Florida isn't a deep-red state. It's a close state where one side keeps winning the close ones, then calls it a mandate.
Why does it keep breaking one way? Money, for one. Donalds had a big financial edge. Maps, for another. Republicans redrew districts to try to wipe out Democratic House seats (two Florida Democrats survived anyway). And some of it is on Democrats. Jolly skipped the debate. In a race this close, you show up.
Red tide isn't permanent. It blooms when conditions feed it: warm water, runoff, nobody dealing with the source. Florida's politics work the same way. Nothing changes until somebody deals with what's feeding it.
Before the election, Donalds posted that the goal was to "KEEP FLORIDA RED." He did. Now he owns it: the insurance bills, the flooded streets, the data centers, the price of everything. The rest of the country just put a check on Washington. Florida has to be its own check.
We'll be watching.
— Joseph Jackson, Florida Man News Network
Sources
- Florida Phoenix: Donalds defeats Jolly, becoming Florida's first Black governor
- NBC News: Election 2026 live updates
- NBC News: Byron Donalds wins Florida governor's race
- Washington Post: House election results 2026
- PBS NewsHour: Election night live updates
- CBS12: Donalds defeats Jolly
- TIME: Equal Justice Initiative report on lynchings
- Central Florida Public Media: Florida leads nation in hate groups, SPLC says
- Washington Post: Democrat Gina Hinojosa wins Texas governor's race
- FMNN: Texas Turns Blue