Florida Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott has defeated Democratic Senator Bill Nelson after a manual recount put Scott ahead by approximately 10,000 votes. Democrat Andrew Gillum conceded the Florida gubernatorial race “for a second and final time” Saturday night, signaling the end of an extended recount.
Scott said in a statement: “I just spoke with Senator Bill Nelson, who graciously conceded, and I thanked him for his years of public service.”
“Now the campaign truly is behind us, and that’s where we need to leave it,” Scott said in a statement. “We must do what Americans have always done: come together for the good of our state and our country. My focus will not be on looking backward, but on doing exactly what I ran on: making Washington work.”
Gillum conceded in a video posted to social media, thanking supporters and acknowledging DeSantis as the state’s next governor.
“R. Jai [Gillum’s wife] and I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Mr. DeSantis on becoming the next governor of the great state of Florida,” Gillum said.
“We also want you to know that even though this election may be beyond us, that this – although nobody wanted to be governor more than me – this was not just about an election cycle,” he added. “This was about creating the kind of change in this state that really allows for the voices of everyday people to show up again in our government, our state, and our communities.”
DeSantis responded, “This was a hard-fought campaign. Now it’s time to bring Florida together.”
The results of the manual recount put Scott ahead by 10,033 votes over Nelson, while DeSantis won 4,075,445 to 4,041,762.
Florida’s Broward County — now notorious for a string of election recount disasters this week — “lost” more than 2,000 ballots “somewhere in the building” on Saturday.
“Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said they either misplaced, misfiled or mixed in with another stack,” the Broward County’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper reported. At 8 p.m. Saturday night, Broward gave up the search and resumed the hand recount Sunday morning.
An analysis shared with the Miami Herald shows that DeSantis likely won 66% of the state’s Cuban American voters. The study looked at election results in 35 predominantly Cuban precincts in the suburbs of Miami-Dade County and found that the Republican gubernatorial nominee won twice the number of voters as his Democrat opponent, 66% to 33%.
As the Herald notes, DeSantis’ 33-point advantage among Cuban Americans was consistent with a Telemundo/Mason Dixon poll published days before the election that showed him with a similar lead over Gillum.
“DeSantis’ win was the result of three factors,” said Sopo. “First, he maintained GOP strongholds in rural and exurban counties, and in doing so, won 60% of Florida’s white voters. Second, it appears that turnout among Hispanic Democrats was low this year, which is evidenced by the state’s three majority-Hispanic counties — Miami-Dade, Hendry, and Osceola — having had some of the lowest turnout levels in all of Florida. Last, but not least: the Cuban vote. Had DeSantis merely replicated Trump’s margins among Cuban American voters, we’d be talking about Governor-elect Gillum right now.”
“According to an analysis by University of Florida political scientist Daniel A. Smith, voters between the ages of 18 and 29 have cast just 6 percent of the ballots to date, despite making up 17 percent of the state’s electorate.”
