Donalds Won the Governor Race by About a Point, a Far Closer Count Than Any Final Poll Showed

Republican Byron Donalds won the Florida governor's race on November 3, 2026, but by a far narrower margin than the final polls showed: the Division of Elections' unofficial results, read at 9:59 a.m. on November 5, 2026, had Donalds at 4,132,334 votes, or 50.02%, to 4,024,639, or 48.71%, for Democrat David Jolly, a lead of 107,695 votes and about 1.3 points. CBS News and NBC News both projected Donalds the winner on election night, and both venues pricing the race have settled their contracts on a Republican win.

The Florida governor race results matter beyond the winner's name because of how close the count came against what forecasters expected. Every one of the eight public polls released in the race's last week, as listed by 270toWin, had Donalds ahead by between two and seven points, and the governor market, which on the eve of the vote had Donalds's party at 65% on Kalshi, priced a race with a real chance of going the other way. The result decides who succeeds Ron DeSantis, who is term-limited, as Governor of Florida.

What the unofficial count shows

The Division's Florida Election Watch page lists ten tickets for Governor and Lieutenant Governor. Donalds ran with Bryan Avila, and Jolly with Gwen Graham. The Libertarian ticket of Scott Eckhard Jewett and Nicole Skelly took 37,889 votes, or 0.46%, and five no-party tickets together took about 0.8%, so Donalds cleared the 50% mark by fewer than 1,500 votes.

The count is close to complete but not finished. The Division's county reporting page, read the same morning, shows all 67 counties with every precinct reported and their mail and early ballots completed. Provisional ballots were not yet completed in 60 counties, and the ten-day overseas mail ballots were not yet completed in 64. Turnout stood at 8,335,497 ballots from 13,704,495 eligible active registered voters, or 60.82%.

Those outstanding ballots cannot plausibly erase a lead of 107,695 votes, and Florida law does not order a recount at this margin. Section 102.141(7) of the Florida Statutes orders a recount only when a candidate is defeated by one-half of a percent or less of the votes cast for the office, and the margin here is more than twice that. The result is unofficial until the state certifies it, and nothing in the record suggests the count is headed anywhere but certification.

NBC News described the result as extending a nearly three-decade Republican run in the governor's mansion: Donalds will be Florida's fifth consecutive Republican governor, in a state that has not elected a Democratic governor since 1994, and DeSantis won the 2022 race by more than 20 points. CBS News reported that Donalds is set to become the first Black governor in Florida's history.

How the governor market priced the race going in

On November 2, 2026, the evening before the vote, Kalshi had the Republican Party at 65% to win the governor's race and Polymarket had the Democratic Party at 35%. Read plainly, the market made Donalds about a two-in-three favorite, which means it expected a Republican win but left roughly one chance in three for an upset. That was a sharp fall from Polymarket's 82% for the Republican Party on October 23, 2026, a slide that came as the final polls narrowed and that the story on the final early-vote count followed into the last weekend.

Both venues have since settled. Kalshi's own data lists its two governor contracts as finalized, with the Donalds contract resolved Yes and the Jolly contract resolved No, and records the settlement at 9:17 p.m. Eastern time on November 3, four minutes after CBS News published its projection. Polymarket's data shows its Donalds market resolved Yes, closing at 12:14 a.m. on November 4. On both venues the Republican Party now trades at 100%, which is a settled price, not a forecast, and it means no contract on the governor's race is waiting on the canvass or the certification.

A 65% price is not a margin forecast, so the result does not make the market right or wrong in a simple way. What the price said was that the race was closer than a seven-point poll lead would imply, and the count bears that out: a lead of about 1.3 points is the kind of result a market leaving one chance in three for Jolly had in view. The polls' final average on 270toWin, Donalds 49.9% to Jolly 45.3%, had the winner right and the gap more than three times too wide.

Why the margin came in narrow

The count itself does not say why, and the reasons will be argued for months. What it does show is a statewide Republican win built on a lead far smaller than DeSantis's in 2022, on a turnout of 60.82% of eligible active registered voters, and a result that sits below the bottom of the final polls' range rather than inside it. The result is a miss of about three and a half points against the polling average, while the market's price had already come down from October's confidence to a level that allowed for a race this tight.

NBC News reported that Donalds raised about 130 million dollars and that national Democratic groups gave Jolly little help. A money gap of that size and a margin this small sit together uneasily, which means the race will be read as much for the margin as for the winner. The governor's result also ran behind the Senate race on the same ballot, where the unofficial count had Republican Ashley Moody at 50.87% to 47.99% for Democrat Angie Nixon, a lead of nearly three points.

The rest of the statewide ballot

The governor's race was not the only statewide contest with a call. CBS News Miami's live coverage records that the Associated Press projected Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia reelected over Democrat Annette Taddeo and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson reelected over Democrat Joey Atkins, and that CBS News projected Attorney General James Uthmeier the winner over Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez. The same coverage records an Associated Press projection that voters rejected Amendment 2, one of the three constitutional amendments on the ballot.

Those calls leave the Cabinet in Republican hands alongside the governor's office. The governor and Senate races are the two statewide contests with Florida market pages here, and both of their boards have now settled.

What happens next

The certification calendar is set by the Division's 2026 results reporting timeline and the statutes it cites.

• 5 p.m. on November 5, 2026: the deadline for voters to cure a vote-by-mail ballot or provide proof for a provisional ballot.

• Noon on November 7: county canvassing boards file their first unofficial returns with the Department of State.

• Noon on November 16: county official returns are due, including the ten-day overseas ballots.

• 8 a.m. on November 17: the Elections Canvassing Commission certifies the official returns.

Until that certification the figures above are unofficial, and the race page for the governor's contract, Florida governor odds, keeps the settled board. Every Florida contest is on the elections page.