The contest for the 27th Congressional District of Florida between Republican María Elvira Salazar and Democrat Eliott Rodríguez may be decided through a recount of votes, after the difference between the two candidates was only 0.46% following the counting of ballots on Tuesday.
With 99% of the expected votes counted, Salazar had accumulated 124,483 votes (50.2%) compared to 123,367 for Rodríguez (49.8%), according to the decision desk of NBC News, a lead of just about 1,100 votes.
That difference is located below the threshold of 0.50% established by Florida law to trigger an automatic recount using machines, as explained by the Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor, Alina García, in an official statement.
"After the counting of the votes cast at the polls on the General Election Day of November 3, the difference between the candidates in the race for the United States Congressional District 27 currently stands at 0.46%, which is within the 0.50% margin established by Florida law for an automatic recount using machines," García noted.
In addition to the automatic recount, state legislation provides for a manual recount if, after the process by machines is completed, the margin remains at 0.25% or less.
The final result is still not finalized because there are 202 mail-in ballots from District 27 pending resolution of signature discrepancies, with a deadline until 5:00 p.m. on Thursday for voters to address those inconsistencies.
The review of provisional ballots issued during early voting and on the day of the election itself is also ongoing, García reported.
The Counting Board will meet on Friday, November 6th to review those ballots, after which there will be additional information that could alter the final margin.
"It is important to clarify that the Secretary of State of Florida is responsible for ordering an automatic recount of votes when the margin established by law is reached. If a recount is ordered, it will not begin before Saturday, November 7," the official specified.
The legal deadlines stipulate that the results of the automatic recount must be submitted to the Department of State by 3:00 p.m. on November 12, while those of a potential manual recount should be ready by noon on November 16.
The result represents a dramatic turnaround compared to previous contests: Salazar had declared herself the winner in 2024 by more than twenty percentage points and in 2022 by nearly fifteen, while this Tuesday she barely managed to stay above the line.
Salazar herself, upon declaring victory, called on the Republican Party to correct its approach regarding immigration and the economy, implicitly acknowledging the impact of discontent among Hispanic voters in the district, where that demographic constitutes approximately 73.5% of the total population.
Rodríguez, a Cuban-American journalist and former CBS Miami anchor for nearly 25 years, did not concede defeat and urged waiting for the last vote to be counted.
García emphasized that voter participation in Miami-Dade reached 60.5%, with 794,583 ballots cast from a total of 1,313,268 registered voters, surpassing the numbers recorded in the 2022 midterm elections.
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