By Jim Saunders,
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA,,,
TALLAHASSEE — A governor’s race. A U.S. Senate race. Trump.
The 2018 midterm elections in Florida pretty much had everything a political junkie could want. Here are some of the numbers from Tuesday’s unofficial results:
62.13: The percentage of voters who went to the polls. For those of you keeping score at home, that equates to 8.25 million voters out of nearly 13.28 people who were registered to cast ballots.
77.68: The turnout percentage in Sumter County, the highest in the state. No wonder Republican politicians head to Sumter County every two years to woo voters in The Villages retirement community. GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis, for example, received nearly 70 percent of the vote in Sumter.
56.89 and 57.37: The turnout percentages in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, respectively. For Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, those number might have sealed his loss Tuesday. Southeast Florida is long where Democrats have gone to pile up margins.
54: The number of counties won by DeSantis and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rick Scott. Yes, from Escambia to Monroe, they won the same counties.
13: The number of counties won by Gillum and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bill Nelson, including all of the large urban counties — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Duval. The others carried by the Democrats were Alachua, Gadsden, Leon, Osceola, Seminole and St. Lucie.
4: The number of counties that Republican President Donald Trump won in 2016 that went to Gillum and Nelson this year. Those four were Duval, Pinellas, Seminole and St. Lucie.
1: Scott’s margin of victory — as in one vote — over Nelson in Monroe County. Scott got 18,021 votes, while Nelson got 18,020.
11: The number of constitutional amendments approved by voters. From restoring the rights of felons who have served their sentences to banning greyhound racing, voters were on board with the ballot proposals. The outcome was a victory for the state Constitution Revision Commission, which got seven of its proposals approved.
58.09: The percentage of votes received by Amendment 1, the only ballot proposal that failed to reach the required 60 percent threshold to pass Tuesday. Amendment 1 would have provided a larger homestead property-tax exemption to many Floridians.
0: The number of statewide offices that Democrats will hold if Nelson and agriculture-commissioner candidate Nikki Fried do not prevail in recounts. Nelson has been the lone Democratic statewide office-holder since former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2010.