Republicans won a pair of special elections in Florida on Tuesday, further padding the House GOP’s slim margins during a busy legislative year at the start of Donald Trump’s second term.
Republican Randy Fine easily defeated Democrat Josh Weil in Florida’s solid-red sixth congressional district, and the Sunshine State’s chief financial officer, Republican Jimmy Patronis, defeated his Democratic opponent in a separate special election to fill Florida’s first congressional district seat, vacated by former Representative Matt Gaetz.
In the lead-up to Election Day, Republicans were more worried than initially expected that, given Weil’s fundraising edge, the race for National Security Adviser Mike Waltz’s old congressional seat would flip to the Democrats. Waltz, who resigned from the seat after being tapped for a plum spot in the Trump administration, had carried the district by 33 points in November. Special elections are typically low-turnout affairs and can be unpredictable, and polls conducted in the days leading up to the contest suggested that the race was too close for comfort for the GOP.
Both parties are expected to parse the special election results to see how they compare with Republicans’ 2024 victory margins. Around 9 p.m., Fine was leading by around 14 points, and Patronis was leading by about 15.
The closely watched contests were seen as must-win races for Republicans given this year’s slim House GOP majority, which alongside Senate Republicans will determine whether President Trump’s legislative agenda gets across the finish line this year.
Republicans in Washington are so worried about this year’s slim House majority that the White House last week pulled Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) from consideration as Trump’s pick to serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., even though she had already hired staff for the role and had spent recent weeks on a farewell tour in her deep-red district, which she carried by 24 points in November.
Keeping her in Congress means Republicans won’t have to worry about a special election to fill her seat. “With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat,” Trump wrote in a social media post announcing his decision last week.
Florida isn’t the only state in the electoral spotlight on Tuesday evening. Far more expensive than both Florida contests is the race for Wisconsin supreme court, which will determine the balance of power on the state’s highest bench. The contest between conservative Brad Schimel and liberal Susan Crawford has drawn millions in outside spending from billionaire donors, and it has already broken records for the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history.
In all three contests on Tuesday evening, Democrats sought to tie the Republican candidates closely to the White House’s cost-cutter in chief, Elon Musk, a polarizing figure over whom Democrats have spent months obsessing in an attempt to tar Trump by association.
Both special-election victories in Florida come as a major relief to House GOP leaders, who were awaiting the election results hours after Speaker Mike Johnson’s effort to tank a proxy voting proposal died on the House floor. The proxy vote proposal snafu is not a major legislative priority for the Trump administration, but it is seen as a harbinger of congressional GOP leaders’ struggles to get the White House’s agenda to Trump’s desk by the end of the year.
This story has been updated with new information.