Republican candidate wins tight Florida Senate race

During almost the entire vote count, Nixon appeared slightly ahead of Moody. The Republican took the lead before the end of counting all the votes.

Moody, despite being an incumbent, was nominated for the position in 2025 by the Republican Party after senator-elect Marco Rubio was appointed Secretary of State by Donald Trump, resigning from Congress to join the federal government.

With this result, Florida remains a Republican stronghold. In 2022, for example, the state re-elected Marco Rubio with 57.7% of the votes. Democrat Val Deming received 41.3% of the vote. The difference between the two was more than 16 percentage points. In 2024, Senator Rick Scott was elected with 55.6% of the votes in the race against 42.8% of votes for Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

Ashley Moody, 51, had already been serving as a senator from Florida after being appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis to fill the seat vacated by Marco Rubio's departure as Secretary of State in Donald Trump's government. She is a lawyer and was previously Florida's attorney general.

Angie Nixon is 42 years old and is a community activist and businesswoman. It is part of the political organization Democratic Socialists of America. She defeated the then 'favorite' to run for the Democratic Senate seat: in August of this year, she won the primaries against Alex Vindman, a candidate who had a considerably larger budget. The international press classified his performance as a "turnaround". Previously, she was a state representative in Florida, serving since 2020.