David Jolly, a former congressman who left the Republican Party eight years ago, won the Democratic primary for governor of Florida this Tuesday with 61% of the votes, surpassing his closest rival by 45 percentage points.
The outcome makes Jolly, 53 years old and originally from the Tampa Bay area, the Democratic candidate aiming to reclaim the governorship of a state that Republicans have controlled continuously since 1999.
Jolly will face Republican Byron Donalds, a 47-year-old congressman from Naples, on November 3rd. He won his primary with 48% of the votes and has the support of President Donald Trump since February 2025.
The contest has a dual historical component: Donalds aims to become the first Black governor of Florida, while Jolly seeks to be the first elected Democrat to that position in more than three decades. The last was Lawton Chiles, who was reelected in 1994 by a narrow margin over Jeb Bush.
Jolly's profile is unusual for a Democratic candidate: he represented the 13th congressional district as a Republican from 2014 to 2017, left that party in 2018, and did not formally join the Democrats until 2025, the year he launched his gubernatorial campaign. His running mate is Gwen Graham, a former congresswoman and daughter of former governor Bob Graham, announced in June of this year.
The magnitude of her victory in the primary—45 points ahead of the second candidate—reflects that the Democratic electorate in Florida clearly favored a moderate profile capable of attracting independents and Republicans disenchanted with Trump, a strategy different from the one Democrats have followed in other states.
Donalds, for his part, arrived at the polls with 49% of the intended vote in the surveys against the other 10 Republican candidates. The lieutenant governor Jay Collins, who presented himself as the continuator of Ron DeSantis' legacy, finished in second place with only 25%. DeSantis himself, restricted by constitutional limits from seeking a third consecutive term, did not endorse any candidate, not even his lieutenant governor.
After the results were announced, Donalds posted a message on his X account that combined a call for Republican unity with a direct attack on his opponent: "My Democratic rival would raise taxes, increase the cost of living, and bring the radical Democratic left agenda to the Sunshine State. Florida cannot afford liberal David Jolly."
The terrain that both candidates will have to contest is markedly adverse for the Democrats. The Republicans hold a supermajority in the state legislature, with 27 out of the 40 Senate seats and 83 out of the 120 in the House of Representatives, allowing them to pass laws with minimal opposition.
Florida, which for decades was a swing state, has firmly shifted to the right, partly due to the Hispanic voters' turn towards the Republican side, including historical strongholds like Miami-Dade County. Donalds' candidacy has been closely followed by the Cuban-American community, given his stance on Cuba and his connection to Trump.
In total, nearly two million people voted before primary day—1.15 million by mail and 818,000 in-person early votes—and more than 1.3 million voted in person this Tuesday, according to preliminary data from the Florida Division of Elections with over 96% of precincts reporting.
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