Florida’s Governor Race Is Closer Than Its Senate Race
Same state, same ballot, same day. One is a four-in-five Republican hold. The other is a four-point race. Almost all the national attention is pointed at the wrong one.
Florida has a Senate seat and a governorship on the same August 18 ballot. Almost all of the national attention is on the Senate seat, because Senate seats decide majorities. The polling says the governor's race is the closer of the two — by a wide margin.
Both are open in the sense that matters: neither has an elected incumbent defending it. And they are producing very different numbers.
The Senate seat: a special election with a comfortable favorite
This is a special election for the remainder of the six-year term Marco Rubio won in 2022. Rubio was confirmed as Secretary of State in January 2025, and Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed then-Attorney General Ashley Moody to the vacancy. She is now defending it for the final two years of the term.
Moody faces token opposition in the Republican primary — Chris Gleason, Neelam Taneja Perry, and Ernie Rivera are on the ballot with her. The contested side is the Democratic primary, where Alex Vindman is the frontrunner and state Rep. Angie Nixon is his one meaningful challenger.
Decision Desk HQ's forecast gives Republicans roughly a four-in-five chance of holding the seat. Trump carried Florida by thirteen points in 2024, and Moody has run and won statewide before, which is more than most appointed senators can say.
The same forecast that gives Republicans about 80 percent here also finds that if Democrats did flip it, their probability of winning the Senate outright would jump to roughly 84 percent. It is a low-probability, extremely high-leverage seat — the kind of race that is rational to spend on even when you expect to lose it, because the branches beyond it are so lopsided.
The governor's race: a four-point spread
DeSantis is term-limited, and the Republican primary is the more interesting half of Tuesday. Rep. Byron Donalds, endorsed by Trump, leads Decision Desk HQ's polling average at roughly 43 percent. Behind him the field is fragmented:
| Candidate | Background | DDHQ avg |
|---|---|---|
| Byron Donalds | U.S. Rep.; Trump-endorsed | ~43% |
| Jay Collins | Lt. Gov., appointed Aug 2025; retired Green Beret | ~14% |
| James Fishback | Businessman, conservative activist | ~9% |
| Paul Renner | Former state House Speaker | ~8% |
On the Democratic side, former Rep. David Jolly leads the field. Jolly is a Tampa Bay Republican who left the party and became a Democrat in 2025, running now with former Rep. Gwen Graham as his lieutenant governor pick, on affordability, property-insurance reform, and public schools.
And here is the number that should reframe how you read Tuesday: DDHQ's average of the likely Donalds–Jolly general has Donalds ahead by four points, 43 to 39.
Why the gap exists
A few things are probably doing the work.
Property insurance and cost of living are state problems. A governor's race is litigated on premiums, property taxes, and utility bills in a way a Senate race generally is not. Florida's insurance market is the most acute affordability crisis in the state, and it is squarely a Tallahassee issue. Jolly has built his campaign on it.
Jolly's party switch cuts both ways, and one of them helps. A former Republican congressman is a difficult candidate for the standard partisan attack. Whether that survives a general-election ad campaign is a genuinely open question — but at this stage of the race it is showing up in his numbers.
Moody has a structural advantage Jolly's opponent lacks. She has already won a Florida statewide race. Donalds has not; he represents one congressional district. Trump's endorsement all but guarantees him the nomination, and does considerably less for him in November.
There are two no-party candidates on the November ballot. Jason Pizzo and Charles Burkett — the latter a four-term mayor of Surfside who led the town through the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse — qualified directly for the general rather than through a primary. In a four-point race, where their votes come from is not a rounding error.
The honest caveats
Primary-season polling averages of hypothetical general-election matchups are the softest data in politics. Nobody has run a negative campaign against Jolly yet. Donalds has spent months campaigning to Republican primary voters rather than to the state. A four-point lead in mid-August is a snapshot of an unformed race, and Florida's polling has underestimated Republicans in each of the last several cycles.
Our rating stays Lean R for the governorship and Likely R for the Senate special. But the ordering is the point: if you are watching Florida on Tuesday for a competitive general election, watch the governor's race, not the Senate one.
What to watch
- Donalds's share. Clearing 50 percent in a four-way field is a very different launch into November than winning with 43.
- Whether Jay Collins overperforms his polling. A strong second for the sitting lieutenant governor would say something about how much of the DeSantis operation is still functional.
- The Vindman–Nixon margin. The only genuinely contested Senate primary on the ballot, and a read on where Florida Democratic energy sits.
- Primary turnout by party. Florida's closed primaries make raw participation a rough but real enthusiasm signal.