Florida has done it again, offering election results that are initially too close to call with a recount of millions upon millions of votes on the horizon. Wednesday morning, hours after voting in the midterms concluded, the Chief of Staff to Florida’s incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Bill Nelson asserted that there will be a recount in his race for re-election against outgoing Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott.
Chief of staff for Sen. Bill Nelson says there will be a recount for the Florida Senate race.
Watch @CatieBeckNBC and @SteveKornacki with more analysis. pic.twitter.com/9ftEMDVZSE
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 7, 2018
As of early Wednesday morning, the candidates were separated by only about 0.4 percent — which translates to 34,700 votes in a race featuring well over eight million — and under state law, recounts are demanded if there’s a margin of less than 0.5 percent separating two candidates.
Florida has had plenty of recount infamy in the past, with a final margin separating the two presidential candidates in 2000 of less than 1,000 votes. The responsibility now falls to every one of Florida’s hundreds of counties to go through their votes yet again. A similar outcome was avoided in the race to replace Scott as Florida governor; Republican Ron DeSantis beat Democrat Andrew Gillum by around 0.7 percent, finishing around 55,500 votes ahead in a race that also featured over eight million votes.
The win was major for Republicans, who were looking for victories in a night that they expected to lose big in U.S. House races from the get-go. That expectation certainly proved prescient, as Republicans lost control of the body and Democrats are now poised to enjoy the full power that comes from controlling a house of Congress.
They were, unable, though, to make headway in the U.S. Senate, where they’ve lost a number of seats, including Heidi Heitkamp’s, Joe Donnelly’s, Claire McCaskill’s — and maybe Bill Nelson’s.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
