Florida Heads to an August 18 Primary With an Open Governor's Race and a Senate Seat on the Ballot

Florida voters go to the polls on August 18 for a primary election that will shape the most consequential state ballot in nearly a decade. Nearly 13.5 million Floridians are eligible to cast ballots, choosing among crowded fields in an open governor's race and a United States Senate special election, along with legislative, congressional, and local contests across all 67 counties.

The stakes are unusually high because both of the state's marquee offices are genuinely open. Governor Ron DeSantis is term-limited after eight years and leaves office in January 2027. The Senate seat is on the ballot through a special election to fill the remainder of the term Marco Rubio won in 2022, vacated when Rubio was confirmed as Secretary of State in January 2025.

Republicans enter the cycle with a registration advantage that has expanded to roughly 1.5 million voters over Democrats, a reversal of the near-parity that characterized Florida's voter rolls for most of the past two decades.

The governor's race

Twelve candidates are running in the Republican primary for governor. Jay Collins, Byron Donalds, James Fishback, and Paul Renner have drawn the most local media attention among a field that also includes Jim Holcomb, Arthur McCaffrey, Daniel Nokovich, Rachel Rodriguez, James Shaw, Caneste Succe, and Bobby Williams.

The Democratic field includes Evelyn Castillo Bach, Thomas E. Fernandez, Dayna Marie Foster, Dotie Joseph, David Jolly, and Kenneth Stephann Norman.

A field of twelve in a closed primary creates real uncertainty. Florida does not hold runoff elections for state office, meaning the candidate with the most votes wins the nomination regardless of whether that total constitutes a majority. In a fragmented field, a nomination can be won with a plurality well short of 50 percent, which places a premium on consolidated support and on turnout among a candidate's strongest constituencies.

The winners advance to a November 3 general election that will decide who leads Florida through the next four years of hurricane seasons, budget cycles, and legislative sessions.

The Senate special election

The Senate contest carries its own structure. Governor DeSantis appointed then-Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill the vacancy created by Rubio's departure, and Moody now seeks election to the remainder of the term. Three other Republicans appear on the primary ballot alongside her, and two Democrats are competing for their party's nomination.

The primary winners will appear on the November general election ballot along with one candidate running without party affiliation.

The seat matters beyond Florida. Control of the Senate turns on a small number of competitive races nationally, and Florida's two seats give the state significant leverage on federal policy that directly affects Floridians, including disaster funding, flood insurance program reauthorization, immigration enforcement, and the federal tax treatment of state and local taxes.

Florida's closed primary system

Florida runs closed primaries, which means voters may participate only in the primary of the party in which they are registered. Voters registered without party affiliation cannot vote in either party's partisan primary.

There is one significant exception. When all candidates for an office are from the same party and the winner will face no general election opposition, the race becomes a universal primary contest open to all registered voters regardless of affiliation. That provision applies most often to legislative and county-level offices in heavily one-sided districts.

Nonpartisan races appear on every voter's ballot regardless of registration. In Florida that category includes school board contests, judicial races, and many municipal offices, several of which are contested this cycle.

The closed primary structure means Florida's rapidly growing bloc of unaffiliated voters, who now constitute a substantial share of the electorate, will have limited say in narrowing the fields for the state's top offices.

How and when to vote

Florida offers three methods of voting, and the deadlines differ for each.

Vote-by-mail requires an active request on file with the county supervisor of elections. Florida law changed in recent years to require voters to renew mail ballot requests more frequently than in the past, and many voters who received mail ballots in prior cycles must submit a new request. Returned ballots must be received by the supervisor of elections by 7 p.m. on Election Day. A postmark is not sufficient.

Early voting periods are set by county supervisors within a state-defined window, and the specific days and hours vary by county. Early voting sites allow any voter in the county to cast a ballot regardless of precinct assignment.

Election Day voting requires voters to appear at their assigned precinct. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time, and voters in line at 7 p.m. must be allowed to vote. Florida spans two time zones, with most Panhandle counties on Central Time.

Voters must present current and valid photo identification with a signature. Acceptable forms include a Florida driver license, a Florida identification card, a United States passport, a military identification, and several others.

Down-ballot races that matter

The statewide contests draw attention, but the races closest to daily life sit further down the ballot.

All 120 seats in the Florida House and roughly half the state Senate are on the ballot this cycle, and many will effectively be decided in the August primary given the partisan composition of the districts. The Legislature sets the state budget, writes property insurance and tax law, and controls education funding.

County commission races determine local land use decisions, which in a state managing rapid growth is among the most consequential authority any local body holds. School board races decide district budgets, superintendent selection in appointed districts, and instructional materials policy.

Sheriff, property appraiser, tax collector, clerk of court, and supervisor of elections races appear in many counties. These constitutional officers operate with substantial independence and direct effect on residents.

What to watch on election night

Florida generally reports results faster than most large states because counties begin processing mail ballots before Election Day. Early and mail vote totals typically post shortly after polls close, followed by Election Day precinct returns.

The composition of the electorate is the number to watch. August primaries in Florida draw substantially lower turnout than general elections, and the voters who participate skew older and more consistently partisan. In a twelve-candidate field, a campaign that turns out a committed base can win with a share of the vote that would be nowhere near sufficient in November.

Regional patterns will also be telling. Florida's media markets, from the Panhandle through Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa Bay, Southwest Florida, and South Florida, behave differently, and a candidate's ability to consolidate a home region has historically been a strong predictor in crowded statewide primaries.

How Florida's registration picture shifted

The Republican registration advantage of roughly 1.5 million voters represents one of the more dramatic reversals in modern American state politics, and understanding how it happened clarifies what the August primary means.

For most of the twentieth century, Florida Democrats held a substantial registration edge, a legacy of Southern political alignment that persisted long after voting behavior in presidential elections had shifted. That gap narrowed steadily through the 1990s and 2000s, and the parties reached rough parity in the 2010s.

Several forces drove the change. Migration into Florida brought retirees and working households whose partisan composition differed from the existing electorate. Sustained voter registration operations produced measurable gains. Generational replacement removed older registered Democrats who had voted Republican for decades.

The composition of the state's Hispanic electorate is a distinct and frequently misread factor. Florida's Cuban American community has long leaned Republican, and voters of Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Colombian origin have shown their own patterns. Treating Florida's Hispanic voters as a single bloc has produced repeated forecasting errors.

Where Florida's races are actually decided

An underappreciated feature of Florida elections is how many offices are effectively settled in August rather than November.

Legislative districts drawn to be safely partisan produce general elections that are formalities. In those districts, the primary is the election, and the voters who show up in August choose the person who will hold the seat.

The same holds for many county-level constitutional offices. In counties with lopsided registration, the sheriff, property appraiser, tax collector, and clerk of court are chosen in the dominant party's primary.

Turnout in August primaries typically runs well below general election levels, which means these offices are frequently decided by a small and unrepresentative slice of the eligible electorate. A voter who skips the primary and votes in November may find that the races closest to their daily life were resolved months earlier.

Nonpartisan races, including school board and judicial contests, appear on every voter's August ballot regardless of registration and are decided outright in the primary when a candidate receives more than 50 percent.

The constitutional amendments waiting in November

The August primary narrows candidate fields, but Florida's constitutional amendments appear only on the November ballot, and this cycle carries measures with substantial consequence.

The property tax amendment is the most prominent, and its ballot language is currently the subject of the court order requiring a rewrite. Constitutional amendments in Florida require 60 percent approval to take effect, a threshold that has defeated measures with clear majority support.

Amendments reach the ballot in Florida through several routes: legislative referral, citizen initiative, and the Constitution Revision Commission, which convenes on a twenty-year cycle. Legislative referral is the route for the property tax measure.

Because constitutional provisions are difficult to change once adopted, requiring another statewide vote at the same 60 percent threshold, Florida voters face a higher-stakes decision on amendments than on most candidate races. A governor serves four years. A constitutional provision persists until voters remove it.

What's next

County supervisors of elections are finalizing ballots and preparing early voting sites. Voters uncertain about their registration status, party affiliation, precinct assignment, or mail ballot request should check with their county supervisor of elections office, which maintains lookup tools for each.

The general election follows on November 3, and it will carry the constitutional amendments referred to voters by the Legislature, including the property tax measure whose ballot language a Leon County judge ordered rewritten this week.

For Floridians, August 18 is the first of two decision points in a year that will reshape state leadership. Turnout in the primary will determine which candidates get to make their case in November.