On a midterm election night awash in blue, one significant corner of the country stayed red.
Florida, the third most populous state, withstood a national Democratic surge on Tuesday, remaining a Republican bastion even as the G.O.P. amassed deep losses in Texas and across the electoral map.
“We got wiped out in Texas, the biggest anchor we have in Republican politics,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said on Wednesday. “So really, Florida is the last main anchor standing.”
Florida Republicans held onto a U.S. Senate seat, the governor’s mansion and every statewide office. Those victories were a point of pride for the national party on a night with few celebratory moments, especially in the South. They appeared to reinforce Florida’s standing as a former battleground state that is now solidly Republican.
But even in Florida, Republicans lost some of their oomph.
The party will no longer enjoy supermajorities in the State Legislature, with Democrats netting at least 15 seats, more than they had in decades. Democrats were also on track to retain eight of the state’s 28 congressional seats, the same number they had before the midterms, even after Republican state lawmakers redrew four districts in their favor this spring.
Democrats flipped Miami-Dade County, which Republicans had boasted about winning in 2022 and 2024. And Republican candidates only narrowly won the races for Senate and governor despite vast advantages in fund-raising and voter registration, giving the party a scare.
Senator Ashley Moody, the Republican incumbent, defeated Angie Nixon, her Democratic challenger, by about three percentage points. Byron Donalds, the Republican governor-elect, edged out David Jolly, the Democratic nominee, by about one percentage point — or about 108,000 votes out of more than 8.2 million cast. Mr. Donalds outspent Mr. Jolly by about $150 million.
In contrast, in 2022, Mr. DeSantis, who is term limited, won re-election by nearly 20 points and Senator Marco Rubio by 16 percentage points. Two years ago, President Trump won his adopted home state by 13 percentage points.
“It has been the honor of a lifetime to move this state 14 points in a new direction,” Mr. Jolly said in an emotional concession speech in Tampa on Tuesday night. “Somewhere out there tonight is someone that in the next cycle is going to get it across the finish line.”
For Florida Democrats, the close results were evidence that the national party and its donors, who abandoned the state during the DeSantis era, should invest again. Florida’s size and 10 television markets make campaigning very expensive, though Mr. Jolly and especially Ms. Nixon — who ran a grass-roots operation with no television ads — showed how far limited resources could go.
“Florida Democrats are looking at the results across the country and can only imagine what kind of day we would be having if we had sustained national support,” Nikki Fried, the Florida Democratic Party chairwoman, told reporters on Wednesday.
Still, Florida Democrats could not win statewide races in a year that saw a generational shift in the party’s favor nationally. They also fell just short of winning races for Senate and governor in 2018, another blue-wave midterm.
On Tuesday, their biggest obstacle may have been the enormous lead that Republicans have in voter registration, said Matthew Isbell, a Democratic elections data analyst in the state. National Democrats could have invested in voter registration efforts a year ago, he said, to capitalize on the deep voter discontent with Mr. Trump and his party.
“It was a missed opportunity — this could have been won,” Mr. Isbell said. “If we have the resources, we could start to tilt Florida back to a purplish state, or at least light red.”
As he finishes his eighth year in office, Mr. DeSantis, a proud and pugnacious culture warrior whose “war on woke” raised his national profile, remains the most popular Republican in the state. He did not endorse Mr. Donalds or any other Republican in the primary to succeed him. And he made only a few campaign appearances ahead of the general election, perhaps knowing that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity had hamstrung Republican candidates. (Mr. DeSantis lost to Mr. Trump in the 2024 presidential primary.)
Especially since the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. DeSantis has governed by pushing the limits of his executive power and muscling through his conservative priorities — even if they appeared far to the political right of many Floridians. He has argued that such an aggressive approach has grown the state Republican Party by drawing new residents and winning over existing ones who want their elected leaders to stand for something.
At a news conference on Wednesday, he called the national midterm results “as close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country as we have seen probably in the last 100 years.”
“I don’t think most of us thought it would be this bad,” Mr. DeSantis said.
Some Florida voters may have been motivated to turn out for a ballot measure, known as Amendment 3, that would dramatically cut property taxes on primary homes. The measure, which passed with about 62 percent support, has divided Republican leaders. It is expected to cost local governments billions of dollars in revenue and lead to sharp reductions in public services or to new local fees or taxes — all of which could complicate governing for Mr. Donalds.
“Byron Donalds is about to be handed a dumpster fire of problems, and we are running a live experiment on 23 million Floridians,” said Jeff Brandes, a former Republican state senator and president of the Florida Policy Project, a think tank.
None of that was top of mind as Mr. Donalds took the stage in Hollywood, Fla., on Tuesday night to celebrate keeping the governorship in Republican hands since 1999, when Gov. Jeb Bush took office.
“Mr. President, I want you to hear from Florida,” he said, addressing Mr. Trump. “We are still red.”
Alan Blinder contributed reporting from Tampa, Fla.
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