Scott was leading Mucarsel-Powell by more than a million votes when the race was called at roughly 8:01 p.m. ET.
In a close race that Democrats saw as a potential opportunity in their fight to retain their U.S. Senate majority going into 2025, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) prevailed over his Democratic challenger, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, winning reelection for a second term on Nov. 5.
The race was called shortly after 8 p.m. ET by The Associated Press, with Scott leading by more than one million votes. https://interactives.ap.org/election-results/customers/layouts/organization-layouts/published/58299/24328.html
Scott first won his Senate seat in 2018 by slightly more than 10,000 votes over then-Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) with a 0.12 percent margin. While recent polls showed that in some cases Mucarsel-Powell was within 3 to 4 points of Scott, Republicans now hold a more than 1 million-person voter registration advantage over Democrats in Florida.
That surge of Republican voters in the Sunshine State after the pandemic created a high bar for Democrats running in the state, especially since Democrats still held an advantage over their opponents when Scott ran in 2018.
Scott served as Florida’s governor from 2011 to 2019. He ran a multi-million dollar television ad campaign in early October, targeting Tampa, Orlando, and Miami: areas of the state that still have large numbers of Democrats.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) pledged a multimillion-dollar spending effort to boost Mucarsel-Powell in the state, said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) in late September. From 2019 to 2021, Mucarsel-Powell represented Florida’s 26th congressional district, which included portions of Miami-Dade County and the Florida Keys.
The congresswoman lost her 2020 reelection bid to the then-mayor of Miami-Dade County Carlos A. Giménez, a Republican.
This year, Mucarsel-Powell ran on a platform targeting inflation, the rising cost of living, out-of-control home insurance premiums in Florida, and increasing job and vocational training opportunities.
Scott’s campaign focused on a 12-point plan that included support for education in schools that reject “critical race theory,” plans to remove race designations on state government forms, a tough-on-crime stance, and a continuation of former President Donald Trump’s border wall.
By Jacob Burg
