Florida Governor 2026: Donalds vs. Jolly Briefing

August 21, 2026

Why This Race Is on Our List

Ron DeSantis is term-limited after eight years, and Florida is the country’s third-largest state. Republicans have won every gubernatorial election here since 1998.

The primary produced a result worth noting on its own: Trump’s endorsed candidate won comfortably while the candidate DeSantis backed finished a distant second in the state DeSantis has governed for eight years. The general election is a test case for whether Florida’s rightward shift is permanent or was substantially a DeSantis-era phenomenon.

The State

Florida’s transformation is the relevant context. DeSantis won in 2018 by four tenths of a point. He won reelection in 2022 by 19.4 points. Trump carried the state by roughly 13 points in 2024. Republicans now hold a voter registration advantage exceeding 1.2 million, having trailed a decade ago.

Republicans control every statewide office, both legislative chambers with supermajorities, both Senate seats, and 20 of 28 House seats. Democrats have not won any statewide office since 2018.

Primary turnout was 25.08 percent. Florida is a closed-primary state, so most voters could participate only in their own party’s contest.

The Candidates

Byron Donalds (R) has represented the Naples and Fort Myers area in Congress since 2020 and served previously in the Florida House. He is a prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus and challenged Kevin McCarthy for the speakership in 2023, a contest that ran 15 rounds. Trump endorsed him early, and he led primary polling from that point forward. He won with 810,675 votes, about 48 percent.

David Jolly (D) represented the Tampa Bay area in Congress as a Republican from 2014 to 2017, losing his seat to Charlie Crist. He left the Republican Party in 2018, became a political independent, registered as a Democrat in 2025, and spent the intervening years as a national commentator. He won the Democratic primary with 761,674 votes, about 61 percent. His running mate is former Rep. Gwen Graham, daughter of the late Gov. and Sen. Bob Graham, who sought the nomination herself in 2018.

Jason Pizzo, the former Democratic state Senate leader, has said he intends to run as an independent. He left his leadership post declaring the Democratic Party dead in Florida. Numerous Democrats have argued his candidacy would function as a spoiler. We have not confirmed his final ballot status.

The Primary Result and What It Suggests

Donalds beat Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, who had DeSantis’s backing, by roughly 23 points. Collins took 426,787 votes, about 25 percent. Investor James Fishback, described in coverage as a far-right online figure who drew support from Nick Fuentes, took about 10 percent. Former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner took about 9 percent.

The DeSantis result is the notable one. A governor with two terms and a 19-point reelection margin endorsed his own lieutenant governor and could not deliver the nomination against a Trump endorsement.

Read alongside Georgia and Iowa, where Trump-endorsed candidates lost gubernatorial primaries this year, the pattern is not that endorsements determine outcomes generally. It is closer to the observation that a Trump endorsement remains the strongest single asset in a Republican primary while not being decisive on its own.

Top Issues

Affordability and property insurance form Jolly’s central argument. He describes a generational affordability crisis driven substantially by insurance costs, and argues Tallahassee has neglected it in favor of cultural fights. This is the strongest terrain available to a Democrat here, and it is not a uniquely Florida problem: insurers have withdrawn from high-risk coastal and wildfire regions in Australia, Italy, and parts of the Caribbean over the same period, and governments there face the same question about who carries the risk when private cover retreats.

On education, Jolly has campaigned on increasing public school funding and what he calls fixing a broken voucher system. Donalds has run on school choice and parental rights.

Abortion is Jolly’s most difficult subject, and the criticism has come primarily from Democrats rather than Republicans. As a Republican member of Congress a decade ago he said life begins at conception. He now says his views have evolved on abortion rights.

The state detention facility widely referred to as Alligator Alcatraz has also featured in the campaign, with Jolly criticizing it.

Evidence Check

The fundraising gap is very large and predates the primary. In one quarter, Donalds raised roughly $10.2 million across his political committee and campaign account against roughly $1 million for Jolly. Donalds’s donors included Palm Beach billionaire Thomas Peterffy and shipping magnate Richard Uihlein at $1 million each, and the Florida branch of Club for Growth at $975,000. Jolly’s largest reported donors gave $100,000 each. Reporting since the primary describes Donalds entering the general election with a big financial advantage, and we have found no figures showing that closing.

The Crist comparison is being made, and it cuts both ways. Florida Republican Chairman Evan Power has called Jolly a flip-flopping political relic. The underlying comparison is to Charlie Crist, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat who lost to DeSantis by 19 points in 2022, and who is also the man who beat Jolly for his House seat. The parallel is real. The counterargument is that Crist ran against an incumbent at the height of his popularity while Jolly runs for an open seat. Neither point is settled by the other.

On the claim that Florida has not elected a Democratic governor since 1994: accurate. Lawton Chiles won reelection that year, and Buddy MacKay served the remainder of his term into January 1999 after Chiles died in office, which is why some sources say 1998 and others 1994. Both refer to the same underlying fact.

On Donalds’s primary share, he won with under 48 percent in an eleven-candidate field. In a closed primary that is a clear win and not a weak one, but it is not a majority, and roughly half of Republican primary voters chose someone else.

How This Race Is Being Framed

As a test of whether Florida is still a swing state. Both parties have adopted this frame, and NBC News described Jolly’s candidacy explicitly as a test case for state identity.

As Trump versus DeSantis inside the Republican Party. The primary settled this round. It does not resolve the longer question, and DeSantis remains governor through January.

As a convert versus a MAGA original. Donalds has branded himself a Make America Great Again member of Congress since 2020. Jolly urged Trump to leave the 2016 race after his comments about Muslims. The contrast is unusually clean.

As an affordability election. Jolly’s whole theory is that the affordability crisis is the number one concern regardless of party registration. Whether it can overcome a 1.2 million registration gap is the question, and no Democrat has tested it in Florida under these conditions.

We did not locate a post-primary rating change from Cook, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, or Inside Elections for this race. Coverage consistently describes Donalds as heavily favored.

Discussion Questions

1. Can someone who changed parties be trusted by their new party’s voters?
2. Should a lieutenant governor be able to count on the governor’s endorsement carrying weight?
3. Why might a Trump endorsement matter more in a primary than a sitting governor’s?
4. Is property insurance cost a state government’s responsibility?
5. What should happen when private insurers withdraw from a high-risk region?
6. Does a ten-to-one money advantage decide a race?
7. Should an independent candidate stay in a race if they might change who wins?
8. How should a voter weigh a candidate’s changed position on abortion?
9. Donalds won with under 48 percent. Does that matter?
10. Imagine you are a Florida independent who has voted both ways. What decides your vote?

Florida Governor 2026: Donalds vs. Jolly for an Open Seat