Republican Byron Donalds will be Florida's next governor after defeating Democrat David Jolly in Tuesday's election, but Seminole County voters went the other way.
With about 99% of the expected vote counted, Donalds had 4,132,355 votes (50%) to Jolly's 4,024,669 (48.7%), a gap of about 107,700 votes, according to NBC News results updated at 12:22 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday. The Associated Press called the race for Donalds, Orlando Weekly reported. Libertarian Scott Jewett and five candidates with no party affiliation split the rest.
How Seminole voted
In Seminole County, Jolly carried 105,606 votes (54.03%) to 86,919 (44.47%) for Donalds, according to unofficial results from the county Supervisor of Elections, last updated at 9:22 a.m. Wednesday. That is a margin of 18,687 votes.
The split ran through how people voted. Jolly led among early voters, 49,958 to 38,565, and among mail ballots, 27,181 to 14,791. Donalds won the ballots cast on Election Day, 33,563 to 28,467.
Seminole also favored the Democrats in the three Florida Cabinet races, even as all three Republican incumbents kept their seats statewide, Orlando Weekly reported. In the county, Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez led Attorney General James Uthmeier 54.35% to 45.65%, Democrat Annette Taddeo led Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia 53.95% to 46.05%, and Democrat Joey Mendoza Atkins led Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson 53.97% to 45.84%.
The county's site still listed mail ballots as partly reported, with 192 mail ballots in the cure process and 102 provisional ballots outstanding. About 57% of Seminole's 343,308 registered voters cast a ballot.
