In addition, the razor-close results triggered an automatic machine and manual recount. Election officials were counting absentee and provisional ballots, which reduced Scott’s lead. The Florida race wasn’t quite that close, but it was awfully close by historical standards.įor days, Trump has complained about the Florida race, wrongly claiming that Scott “won” on election night “by a comfortable margin,” and that Democrats were trying to go back and “steal” the election. The second closest Senate election was the Minnesota race in 2008, when, after a mandatory recount, Democrat Al Franken edged Republican Norm Coleman by 225 votes, out of nearly 3 million votes cast. After a great deal of political and legal maneuvering, the two sides agreed to a special election do-over the following September and Durkin ended up winning by a convincing 27,000 votes. After its own partial recount, the state’s ballot commission concluded Wyman won by two votes. After a recount, the state’s secretary of state declared Democrat John Durkin the winner over Republican Louis Wyman by 10 votes. The New Hampshire Senate race in 1974 wins the crown as the closest in history. Only eight other states have ever had a closer Senate race than Florida’s this year.
Ostermeier, who runs a nonpartisan political news site, Smart Politics, at the Humphrey School’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, has compiled a list of the closest Senate elections in all 50 states. Prior to that, senators were chosen by state legislatures. Senators have been chosen by popular vote in each state - in other words via direct election. Since the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, U.S. Senate races in Florida during the direct election era,” Eric Ostermeier, a research associate for the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, told us via email. Bill Nelson race goes down in the history books as the most competitive and narrowly-decided of the 38 U.S. That also makes it the narrowest win ever in a Senate race decided by Florida voters. It was the closest Senate race in the country this year. That’s out of 8.19 million votes cast, a razor-thin margin of 0.12 percentage points. I don’t know what happened to all those votes that disappeared at the very end.Īccording to the Florida Division of Elections, after a recount, Scott beat incumbent Florida Sen. 18, as the president boasted about the positive effect his campaigning had on behalf of several Senate candidates. Trump’s claim about the Florida race came during an interview on “Fox News Sunday” on Nov. The GOP, so far, has suffered a net loss of 37 seats - which is worse than the president’s party has done in 12 of the 19 midterm elections since 1946. In a tweet, Trump boasted that the “Midterm results” for House Republicans “were better than other sitting Presidents.” The outcome was better than some, but not most.Bill Nelson was the closest Senate race in Florida history - a race decided by 0.12 percentage points. Rick Scott won the Senate race in Florida “by a lot.” That’s a relative phrase, but Scott’s victory over incumbent Sen. President Donald Trump in recent days has engaged in some post-election spin: