TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Republican U.S. Representative Byron Donalds won Florida's governor's race on Tuesday night, November 3, 2026, defeating Democrat David Jolly in one of the closest Florida statewide contests in years, according to a race call by the Associated Press. Donalds will succeed term-limited Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and will become the first Black governor in Florida's history — and the first Black Republican ever elected governor of any U.S. state.
Source: Associated Press election results, Florida Governor (Race 10045)
The margin was nothing like the landslides Florida Republicans have grown used to. In the Associated Press count, Donalds polled 4,105,935 votes with 5,577 of the state's 5,634 precincts reporting — 98.99 per cent — and an estimated 99 per cent of the vote counted. The NBC News Decision Desk count, at 98.1 per cent of the expected vote, put Donalds at 50.1 per cent to Jolly's 48.7 per cent — roughly 4.09 million votes to 3.97 million, a gap of about 115,000 to 120,000 votes out of more than 8 million cast. Results remain unofficial until Florida canvasses and certifies them.
Source: This Newsroom (NBC News Decision Desk count)
NPR, reporting the AP call, noted that Donalds won 'with the backing of President Donald Trump and a sizable campaign finance war chest,' and that he clinched the race against a national backdrop of Republican unhappiness with Trump over gas prices and the war with Iran. Florida has some 1.5 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, with another 3.3 million unaffiliated voters — which is why a margin this thin, in a state Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have carried comfortably, will be read nationally as a warning sign for the president's party even in victory.
Source: NPR (Associated Press call), via NPR Illinois
From finance to the governor's mansion
Donalds, 48, spent most of his career in the finance industry before politics. He served two terms in the Florida House and then two terms — now in his third — in the U.S. House, representing Florida's 19th Congressional District in southwest Florida. He began his political life as a Democrat and left the party in 2010, NPR reported, and was an early Trump supporter in the 2024 election; Trump returned the favour with an endorsement, rallying with Donalds just days before Tuesday's vote and backing him at a rally in The Villages in May. Donalds won the Republican nomination in the August 18 primary. His running mate is Bryan Avila, a former state senator from Miami-Dade.
Source: NPR (Associated Press call), via NPR Illinois
On the trail, Donalds stumped on affordability — inflation, housing and insurance costs — and promised to continue the conservative policies of DeSantis, who remains popular in Florida and joined Donalds during the campaign. In September, with polls showing Trump less popular in Florida than DeSantis, Donalds appeared to distance himself from the president by taking prominent displays of Trump's name off his campaign website, NPR reported — a sign of how carefully he had to walk the line between the Trump base and the swing voters who nearly elected his opponent.
Source: NPR (Associated Press call), via NPR Illinois
Jolly's near-miss
David Jolly, 54, made the race close from the other side of the aisle he once sat on. Jolly served in Congress as a Republican, left the party in 2018 during Trump's first term, registered as unaffiliated, and switched to the Democratic Party only last year. A lawyer, lobbyist and television analyst by career, he campaigned on a 'believe in better' slogan and the same affordability agenda — housing, inflation, gas prices — plus a boom in AI data centres, attacking Donalds as 'data center Donalds' for taking industry contributions. Donalds had introduced legislation this summer that would require data centres to generate their own power and water. As of the latest reporting, Awaaz Punjab had not seen a concession statement from Jolly; the count is unofficial until certification.
Source: NPR (Associated Press call), via NPR Illinois
Florida is home to one of America's fastest-growing Indian and Punjabi communities — in Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville and South Florida — and to thousands of Punjabi truckers who run the I-95, I-75 and I-4 freight corridors. A governor elected on insurance and housing costs inherits the state's property-insurance crisis, which hits immigrant homeowners and small trucking and logistics businesses directly. Donalds's promise to continue DeSantis's policies means the state's stance on immigration enforcement, licensing and business regulation is not expected to change direction — but his 1.4-point margin gives him a far weaker mandate than his predecessor's 19-point win.
What happens next
Donalds is set to be sworn in as Florida's 47th governor on January 5, 2027, in Tallahassee, succeeding DeSantis, who was barred from a third consecutive term. Before that, Florida's counties canvass and the state certifies the result; a margin of 1.4 points sits above Florida's automatic machine-recount threshold, so no recount is triggered on the current numbers, though the Jolly campaign has not yet conceded in the reporting available at filing. The new governor takes office with his party's hold on Florida extended to every governor's race since 1998 — but with the clearest evidence in a generation that the state is competitive again.