Why Democrats can spin two Florida losses as good news

It’s been a minute since Democrats have heard any good news coming out of Florida, a one-time swing state where Republicans now hold a 1.2 million voter advantage in party registration. And so, the fact that Democrats were looking forward to watching special election results in the Sunshine State in two heavily conservative districts Tuesday night is surprising – and reflects some important realities about national and local politics.

Perhaps the most important dynamic is the national scoreboard. Republicans went into the night holding a 218-213 advantage with four seats vacant, and came out of it up 220-213, despite two Florida wins that were surprisingly lackluster. Two of the vacant seats are from Democratic representatives who died – one around Houston which voted 69 percent for Kamala Harris in November (election date TBD); the other is in heavily Democratic Tucson (that primary is July 15 and the general election is September 23), where voters favored the (now deceased) Democratic incumbent by nearly 30 points in the last election. At stake Tuesday night were two GOP seats in Florida. They were vacated by Mike Waltz, Trump’s new, embattled National Security Advisor, and Matt Gaetz, now a host on the One America News Network after his attorney general job went up in flames amid a House ethics probe into allegations that he paid a 17-year-old girl for sex and abused drugs. President Trump recently pulled Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be UN Ambassador because he was concerned that a new nominee could lose the seat.

Democrats essentially wrote off Gaetz’s district – Florida’s 1st, in the incorrigibly Republican Panhandle, which went for Trump by 37 points in November. But they reckoned they had perhaps a long shot to knock off Republican State Senator Randy Fine, who calls himself the “Hebrew Hammer,” in the state’s 6th district, which ranges from just south of St. Augustine to Daytona Beach. The district, home to neither candidate, went for Trump by 30 points last year, and for Walz by 33 points, so it isn’t exactly an ideal staging ground for NPR pledge drives or Dylan Mulvaney book signings.  Anything well short of a 30-point win would be spun as a defeat for the GOP – and so, the fact that Fine won by about 14 points is a relief for the party but also a potential warning sign for 2026.

A couple of polls and Fine’s reputation as a potentially weak candidate had Democrats feeling optimistic coming into the night. St. Pete polls had Fine up on Democratic nominee, Josh Weil, a teacher from Orlando, by just four points, and an internal Republican poll, leaked to Politico, had Weil winning by three. CNN and other left-leaning media outlets billed the race as a “test of Donald Trump’s strength” and a potential harbinger of midterm doom for Republicans. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also dissed the Republican nominee before election night.

DeSantis said it was “almost impossible” for someone “with an ‘R’ next to their name to lose” in the 6th district, which is obvious. But he also said, “Do I think that they will get even close to the margins that that I received or President Trump received? No. Is that a reflection on the President? Absolutely not. It’s a reflection of the candidate that’s running in that race.” Ouch!

Though the race played out along the Atlantic coast and in the state’s interior, Israel was a major issue. Weil is a Muslim convert, Fine, a Jew who will now become perhaps Israel’s most ardent supporter in Congress, where there is stiff competition for the title. In 2021, Weil called for the US to withdraw support for Israel, prompting Fine to brand him during the campaign as “Jihad Josh” and accuse him “of antisemitism and of having a “deep-seated hate of Israel and Jews,” charges Weil denied.

Fine has made the news in Florida mostly for his inflammatory rhetoric toward Palestinians and Muslims more broadly. He initially endorsed DeSantis – one of America’s most pro-Israel governors – for president, but later switched his allegiance to Trump because he said DeSantis wasn’t combating antisemitism vigorously enough. His public statements regarding Israel and the Palestinians have raised eyebrows even in pro-Israel circles.

Fine frequently uses the hashtag #BombsAway; it seems there are few targets in the Middle East he doesn’t want bombed. On February 20, he tweeted, “Gaza must be destroyed.” The next day, he tweeted that due to Palestinian terrorism, Palestinians “deserve no state… they deserve only death.” He promised that his first bill in Congress would be to “recognize Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as part of the State of Israel and to call for the expulsion of these monsters from Israel.”

In June 2021, someone on Twitter posted a photo of what appeared to be a dead Palestinian child and asked Fine how he slept at night. “Quite well, actually!” Fine replied, “Thanks for the pic!” In September of last year, he urged Israel to “flatten” Lebanon and “turn Beirut into a parking lot.” After Ayşenur Eygi, a female American citizen of Turkish origin, was fatally shot in the head in September 2024 by Israeli forces in the West Bank, Fine tweeted, “Throw rocks, get shot. One less Muslim Terrorist. #FireAway.” But Israel called the incident a “tragic error” in which she was hit “indirectly” and “unintentionally” – and a Washington Post investigation detailed that she was inexplicably killed 20 minutes after IDF soldiers clashed with Palestinians in the area.

Weil outraised Fine by nearly ten to one ($9.5 million to $1 million) but the New York Times reports that Fine outspent his Democratic challenger on the airwaves by nearly four to one, while CNN claimed Fine outspent Weil by a smaller margin, about $1 million, as the party “came in to rescue him” as they put it. 

Unlike Fine, Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s former chief financial officer who will now take Gaetz’s old seat in the Panhandle, was regarded as a strong candidate. He too was outraised by his opponent, gun control activist Gay Valimont, by a margin of more than three to one. But his margin of victory was only a hair larger than Fine’s at around 15 percent, which is a far cry from the 37 percent margin Trump won the district with in November. Interestingly, both Fine and Patronis performed worst in the largest counties in their districts. In Escambia County, home to Pensacola in the extreme western corner of the state, Trump prevailed by 19 points while Patronis lost by three. While in Volusia County, home to Daytona Beach, Trump won by 21 points while Fine prevailed by a hair less than two points.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, said before the election that Republicans were “panicking.” That’s an overstatement. But it appears clear that the GOP doesn’t perform well in off-year elections, as Trump’s low-propensity voters tend to stay home while the Democrats’ more highly educated, high-propensity voters turn out with greater regularity.

Was DeSantis correct in his prediction that Fine’s expected margin would be attributable solely to him rather than frustration or disappointment with Trump? We don’t have exit polls, so we can only guess why Florida voters acted as they did. Trump’s approval rating sits at about 50 percent, which is good for him but low compared to other presidents early in their terms. But the fact that Patronis performed only slightly better than Fine indicates that voters weren’t particularly stoked about either candidate, or they’re not completely satisfied with how things are going in the country – or both.

My guess is that Trump’s base supports him now more than ever. But those who were lukewarm on him to begin with and voted more against Harris than for him may be feeling nervous about the faltering stock market, the impact tariffs could have on inflation, and perhaps even Trump’s talk of seeking a third term. Fourteen- or 15-point wins in 30-40 point districts aren’t cause for panic, but they’re no cause for celebration either, even if the score is now 220-213.