Election day was Tuesday, November 6th, 2018. As of Thursday, three races in Florida are too close to call and likely to be recounted.
Nikki Fried, the Democrat running for Commissioner of Agriculture, was slightly behind on election day. As more ballots were counted, she gained a 500-vote lead over her opponent.
Senator Bill Nelson and Mayor Andrew Gillum are still behind their opponents, but only by a small margin. This is enough to automatically trigger a recount by Florida law. This means that Florida still doesn’t not know who its Senator and Governor will be next year.
Nelson and Gillum both had a comfortable lead in the polls prior to Election Day, but as results came in, they trailed slightly behind their Republican challengers. Palm Beach and Broward County are still counting vote-by-mail and provisional ballots; and in every county, there are provisional ballots that have not been counted.
By Florida law, a recount is automatically triggered if the difference is 0.5% or less. A manual recount is triggered if the difference is 0.25%. The 2018 midterm election is reminiscent of the 2000 presidential election, where Al Gore would likely have won had it not been for a Supreme Court order to halt a partial recount.
The results will likely not be conclusive until late November.