Democratic Rep. Darren Soto and Republican Ryan Elijah claimed narrow victories in their congressional contests on Saturday, as canvassing boards in Osceola County and across the state submitted their unofficial ballot results to the state.
Both races were just outside of the 0.5%-margin threshold that automatically triggers a recount under Florida law.
Soto led Republican Dan Green by 0.53% on Saturday, a margin of 1,506 votes.
Elijah led Democrat Bale Dalton by 0.503% on Saturday, a margin of 1,631 votes.
“Unofficial returns” for all counties are due to the state Division of Elections by noon on Saturday, Nov. 7. Those “unofficial” figures determine whether a race meets the threshold for an automatic recount under Florida law.
The final ballots tallied on Friday were a mix of those voted provisionally in person — requiring review from the county canvassing board to be counted — and mail-in ballots whose signatures were flagged as different from those on file with the local Supervisor of Elections office, also requiring review from the canvassing board.
In both races, canvassing boards added fewer than 300 new votes — far less than would have been needed to change the outcome of either race.
More votes may be tallied in the coming days. Uniformed and overseas voters can request 10-day extensions for their mail-in ballots under the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act of 1986 — often shortened to “UOCAVA” by election officials. That means votes could still trickle in by the end of next week.
The Associated Press has yet to call either race at time of publication. But the determination of a recount is made using the unofficial results sent to the state on Saturday. That deadline has already passed.
District 9
On Friday morning, incumbent Democratic Rep. Darren Soto, who currently represents Osceola and south Orange County, led Republican challenger Dan Green by 1,464 votes, a margin of 0.51%.
Soto grew that lead slightly with the tallying of a few hundred ballots in Osceola County.
Across two hours and fifty-five minutes on Friday morning, the Osceola County canvassing board reviewed those ballots behind a wall of glass and a locked door in the county offices in Kissimmee. Even for aficionados of municipal governance, it was a slow meeting.
Emmett Shell, Soto’s campaign manager, attended the canvassing board meeting in Osceola County on Friday.
After the board certified those results, Soto grew his lead slightly. The new ballots broke more than two-to-one for the incumbent Democrat: 61 were marked for Soto, while just 25 were marked for Green.
On election night, the incumbent congressman said the results rebuked Republican gerrymandering.
“What this means is that these districts aren't decided in Tallahassee. They're not decided in Washington,” Soto said. “They're decided in Central Florida, the heartland, and the coast.”
This spring, Florida Republicans, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, quickly passed a new congressional map, following other Republican-led states like Texas.
The new map created Republican advantages in half of Florida’s existing Democratic districts, giving the party an edge in 24 of the state’s 28 congressional seats — nearly 86% of the state’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
(That’s far higher than their actual share of the electorate. Republicans are only about 58% of the state’s major party voters by registration.)
Soto is the only Democrat representing a majority Hispanic district, and his Congressional victory in 2024 was by the slimmest margin of any Democrat in Florida.
The new map roughly tripled the area of Soto’s district, adding coastal communities and far more rural and Republican areas.
That redistricting also made it less Hispanic, dropping that demographic’s share of the vote from 55% to 40%. Soto himself is Hispanic; his father is Puerto Rican.
The Associated Press calculated that voters in the new district broke for Trump in 2024 by a 17.8% margin. Soto’s victory reflects the seismic shift toward Democrats this cycle — and, he argued on election night, his aggressive campaigning in the new district and voter frustration with redistricting.
The close result also corroborates Soto’s internal polling, which showed the race as basically tied a month before the election.
The Cook Political Report had categorized both his race and the 7th Congressional District race as “Likely Republican” but changed both ratings to “Lean Republican” four days before the election.
District 7
Elijah’s lead, in contrast, shrank by 70 votes with the remaining ballots counted this week. His race was a mere 9 votes away from triggering a recount. (A recount probably wouldn’t lose him the seat given the size of his margin.)
But the competitiveness of the 7th Congressional District race resembles the widespread losses that Republicans endured nationwide on Tuesday.
The 7th Congressional District includes all of Seminole County and part of Volusia County. Republican lawmakers left the seat untouched when they redrew the state’s congressional map this spring.
Republican Cory Mills has been representing the seat since 2022, but he lost in the Republican primary this year amid a congressional investigation into allegations that he violated campaign finance laws.
Dalton had hoped to ride a wave of Democratic enthusiasm — and Republican backlash — to win a seat without an incumbent on the ticket. His campaign account raised triple what his opponent brought in, and spending to advantage Dalton was double spending for Elijah.
Dalton measurably benefited from that sentiment this year, even if he didn’t win.
In 2024, Cory Mills won the seat by 13.1 percentage points, and by 17.1 points in 2022. Congressional District 7 voters also backed Trump by 12.5 points in 2024.
This election, Elijah, the Republican candidate, only won by nearly half a percent.
Florida was the exception to this year’s substantial losses for the GOP around the country, a bastion for Republican candidates. Yet the competitiveness of this race, and other Congressional contests around Florida this year, shows how high the tide of blue ran up its bulwark — and how close the party came to losing seats here.
Historic turnout
Even without final results, some trends are apparent. Turnout in this year’s midterm election is on track to be some of the highest in any modern midterm.
In Orange County, nearly 58% of voters cast a ballot this year. That’s its second-highest turnout since 1994. In most midterms, it’s closer to 44%.
And in Osceola County, midterm turnout is even lower: only about 40% of voters cast a ballot in most midterm general elections.
This year, that number is nearly 56%.
“Turnout was great,” said Kari Ewalt, an official with the Osceola County Supervisor of Elections office. “This is the highest turnout in a midterm general [for Osceola] since 1994.”
That high turnout, she said, correlates with important races.
“In general, when you have a higher turnout, it shows that voters are enthused about candidates, because candidates really drive voter turnout,” Ewalt said.
Floridians had plenty of reasons to vote this year. They picked their U.S. senator, governor, attorney general, and state and local lawmakers.
Voters were also galvanized by a divisive property tax ballot measure, Amendment 3, and by President Trump’s unpopular governance over the past two years.
In the past two decades, Osceola has bucked its turnout rut only once. It was 53 percent in 2018 — the last midterm with Trump as president.
Florida on the whole followed the same trend this year.
Statewide turnout was just shy of 61%, the highest state average since 1994 — except for the 2018 midterms.
