Americans voted downballot to send a message to D.C. nationwide, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said during a second press conference on Wednesday, explaining how Florida was able to withstand the blue wave but warning that no state is “immune”
from the trends.
“Florida was able to you know do something that no other state, really significant state, was able to do, and that’s be able to win all the statewide offices, Senate, as well as governor and Cabinet, in the face of what was really 100-year type political earthquake,” DeSantis said during a second press conference Wednesday following the midterm elections.
“This was not like 2018. This was not like 2006. This was much, much more severe,” he said, pointing to Florida’s “sister state” of Texas, walking through the GOP’s losses in both the Senate race with James Talarico’s win and the ousting of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
“Not only did they lose the U.S. Senate race, which they haven’t lost one of those in I think like 30 years, but lost it by double digits. Then they lose the governor’s race overwhelmingly against a longtime incumbent who had done a lot. They lost every statewide office, including four Supreme Court justices and the House of Representatives in the state of Texas, that is not just the normal kind of bad, off election. That is a massive, massive sweep, and we saw that in other parts of the country,” he said, pointing to Kansas, Michigan, and Ohio.
“I’ve never seen in a year that was worse for Republicans across the board in a midterm since I’ve been on God’s green earth, and that’s just the reality of it,” he said.
DeSantis said he told candidates running in Florida that they, too, were not immune to the trends of the country.
“I think sometimes people look back to my reelection four years ago, and it was like, ‘Oh well, you know, we had a massive wave, and the rest of the country did, and Florida did all this. We were kind of our own entity.’ Yes and no. I mean, there were unique factors in that race. Obviously, we did very well and swept in a lot of people into office, but it’s not like when things are negative in the atmosphere that we’re just somehow hermetically sealed from that,” he warned, explaining that he told congressional candidates to look at the 2024 results, look at what President Trump got in their district, and “subtract at least 10 because that’s where the line of scrimmage is in the 2026 election.”
“I was kind of right about that because if you look, the state was 13-point Trump margin, Senator Moody by three, all the way down to the governor by about 1 percent, so it was at least a 13, or was at least a 10-point swing, maybe in some respects even more than 13 points because we’ve gained a lot of registration advantage since November 2024,” he said.
In all, Florida did see shifts with the rest of the country, but the swing was half of what it was in other states.
“But I would say these other states, if you look at what happened in 2024, you’re seeing 20-point shifts from red to blue in Ohio, in Texas, in some of these places, this was those were monumental shifts,” he said, noting that Florida only lost a state senate seat and held the line in other races.
The governor also attributed Florida’s victory to voters going out and voting in favor of Amendment Three, increasing the homestead exemption.
“We effectively swept because if you have a once in 100 year negative wave, to only lose one state Senate seat, that’s a win in that situation. It just is. So they did a good job with that. So I’m proud of everyone that was in the fight on all this. I know it’s not easy, but there was a lot that could have been squandered,” he said, adding that this victory in the Sunshine State should not be taken for granted.
“Because what happens is when these waves happen… you’ll have voters come out of the woodwork who just want to send a message to D.C., so they’ll vote down ballot for the same same party that’s out of power. So that ends up affecting county commission races. It ends up affecting legislative races, and in Texas, it affected the governor’s race. It affected the the cabinet races and all the statewides and they lost everything, and that could have happened in Florida and it didn’t,” the outgoing governor said, adding that Florida is “the only state amongst the top 10 states that’s under Republican control.”
“We are the only state I think that was able to get through this with having all of our statewides intact,” he said. “That’s something that you’re only going to keep that if you continue to deliver results for people.”
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