Democrats flipped Senate seats in Texas, Kansas and South Carolina on Tuesday. In Florida they lost two statewide races by less than three points, and the party's own committees never put a dollar into the Senate race. That was a decision, and the ledger shows when it should have changed.
Vikas ErraballiAbout 9 minSources at the end
Democrats flipped Senate seats last night in Texas, Ohio, Kansas and South Carolina, among others, and will hold something like 54 in January.1 In Florida they lost both big statewide races, the Senate seat by under three points and the governorship by just over one, after the party's national committees spent heavily almost everywhere else and almost nothing there. On the party's books, Florida was marked at zero. I think that deserves a harder look than it will get this week while the party toasts Kansas, because Florida could have been a second Texas, and the people who decide where Democratic money goes chose not to find out.
The nominee they skipped
Angie Nixon, a state representative from Jacksonville and a former union organizer, won the Democratic nomination for the Senate in August, beating Alex Vindman 56 to 44. Vindman had raised $16 million to her $1 million.2 She beat him with volunteers and turnout: her campaign ran on more than 300,000 contributions averaging about $31,3 she won 80 percent of the Democratic vote in her home county,4 and Black turnout surged.5 Vindman declined to debate her and spent the Sunday before the primary at a fundraiser on Nantucket.2 That night Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, put out a joint statement praising her.6 Then neither the DSCC nor Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC network aligned with Schumer, spent a dollar on ads for her between that night and Election Day.7 On the airwaves, where those committees spend, Republicans outspent Democrats $28.7 million to $7.9 million, by AdImpact's count.8 All in, with the candidates' own money and every outside group counted, it was $27.7 million for Moody to $21.6 million for Nixon.9 Nixon lost 50.9 to 48.0, about 239,000 votes out of 8.3 million.10 Ron DeSantis appointed Ashley Moody, a Republican, to the seat when Marco Rubio became secretary of state, and Tuesday's vote was a special election for the rest of Rubio's term, so she is on the ballot again in 2028.11
The money was there. Through mid-October, Senate Majority PAC had raised $354 million this cycle and the DSCC $216 million.12 Senate Majority PAC's network spent about $87 million for Sherrod Brown in Ohio, about $47 million in Michigan, $38 million in Maine and about $27 million in Texas.7 Over two weeks in mid-October, Senate ads in Florida from both sides together cost $11.7 million. Ohio's cost $111 million.13
Fig 1 · The position reportGeneral election · Senate
Florida was the only close race the network priced at zero
General-election ad spending by Senate Majority PAC's network, by state, in millions of dollars. Tap a row for detail.
Ohio
$87.4M
Iowa
$47.8M
Michigan
$46.5M
Maine
$38.1M
Texas
$27.5M
N. Carolina
$21.7M
N. Hampshire
$17.2M
Alaska
$15.1M
Kansas
$14.1M
Georgia
$7.1M
Mississippi
$2.2M
S. Carolina
$0.75M
Florida
Marked at zero
$0
Independent expenditures by WinSenate, Texas Forever, North Star and The Georgia Way, the super PACs Senate Majority PAC funds. Lower Costs Now, which SMP part-funds, is left out.
Source: VoteLog state trackers (ref 7, 9)As of Nov 2, 2026 · ¶ fig 1
The governor's race ran the same way. David Jolly, a former Republican congressman running as a centrist Democrat, lost to Republican Byron Donalds 50.0 to 48.7, and Donalds outraised him more than six to one.14 The Democratic Governors Association put at least $15 million each into six other states and $10 million into Iowa.15 It made its first $1 million payment to Jolly's campaign around Oct. 20, two weeks before the election,16 and in the end described its Florida spending as "seven figures."15 So a former Republican and a member of the DSA, with nothing in common but a ballot line, both ran short of money and finished within a point of each other. Whatever moved Florida's voters this year, it wasn't the candidates' labels.
Texas shows what the other path looked like. It hadn't elected a Democratic senator since 1988.17 James Talarico raised $145 million for his own campaign, and Schumer's network added about $27 million.18 He beat Ken Paxton even though Elon Musk by himself put more than $150 million into super PACs backing Paxton.19 In Kansas, which hadn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, money benefiting the Democrat, Adam Hamilton, ran about $74 million to $42 million for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.20 Florida is the third most populous state, and its whole Senate race drew $49 million, about a twelfth of what was spent in Texas.9
Fig 2 · Texas-sized moneyDrawn to scale · area is dollars
Florida's whole Senate race cost a twelfth of Texas's
Campaign spending plus outside money, general election, in millions of dollars.
$579MTexas, whole race
$49.3MFlorida, whole race A twelfth of Texas
$38.1MMaine, SMP network only
$27.7MMoody's side
$21.6MNixon's side
Florida's $49M split $28M for Moody and $22M for Nixon. Matching Moody's side would have cost less than Senate Majority PAC's network spent in Maine.
Florida was the exception among the close races. Of those I could find, it was the only one where Schumer's committees spent nothing on ads for the Democrat. Other Southern long shots got small, late bets. South Carolina got about $750,000 in digital ads in the final week, and Annie Andrews won.22 Mississippi got about $1.7 million starting Oct. 20, and Scott Colom is narrowly ahead with ballots still being counted.23
The committee's defense
The committee has a defense, and the strongest part of it is history. Florida has been drifting away from Democrats for a decade. In 2018 Bill Nelson lost his Senate seat by 10,033 votes after a recount,24 and the party spent the next three cycles losing by more: Rick Scott won re-election in 2024 by nearly 13 points,25 and that year the DSCC spent about $1 million on television in Florida while spending $13 million in Texas.26 The Republican registration edge grew from about 229,000 in 2022 to about 1 million in 2024 to 1.5 million this year.27
Gillibrand said after the results that the party did invest in Florida, but "you would have needed Texas-sized money to win in Florida."28 Its media markets are expensive. The DSCC exists to win a majority, and it won one. The committee also points to what it did do for Nixon: a joint fundraising committee, which raised about $395,000 in its first three weeks;29 a $5,000 check from Gillibrand's leadership PAC; virtual donor events; and an undisclosed share of a $40 million field program spread across ten states.30 Set against the $38 million the network spent against Susan Collins, in a state Kamala Harris carried,21 it is hard to call that an investment.
Texas-sized money is also smaller than it sounds. In Texas, Schumer's network put in about $27 million, and the candidate raised the rest himself. Everything spent on Moody's side came to about $28 million. Matching it would have cost less than Maine.
Oversights happen when you are running hundreds of races, but this was a Senate seat. The DSCC had 35 races this year, and in July it named Florida as one of ten states in its field program.30 Gillibrand isn't claiming they missed it. Her answer is cost, and cost is a decision.
Marking to market
On the risk desks I used to sit on, the rule that kept everyone honest was marking to market. When the price moves you re-underwrite the position, whatever you thought of it when you put it on. Florida's price moved twice. In August an underfunded insurgent beat a $16 million candidate by 12 points. In late September the polling average had her about six back.31 In mid-October a University of North Florida poll had her four back, with the governor's race at two.32 Schumer's side did re-underwrite that month, in other states. It pulled money out of Georgia and North Carolina, where Jon Ossoff and Roy Cooper were running strong,33 put $5 million into Kansas with about four weeks left,34 and put $1.2 million into Mississippi, followed by $500,000 from the DSCC.23 Florida was never re-marked.
Fig 3 · The markAug 1 – Nov 3, 2026
The price moved. The position didn't.
Moody's lead over Nixon through the fall, and what Schumer's committees did elsewhere while it moved. Tap a marker for detail.
Scroll sideways for the full timeline →
Polling: late-September average, Moody +6; University of North Florida, Oct 12–19, Moody +4; result Moody +2.9. The dashed line is Senate Majority PAC's Florida ad spending: zero, start to finish.
So the committee was happy to bet on long shots this fall. Was the difference Nixon herself? Schumer helped recruit Mississippi's Democrat, a moderate district attorney.35 Nixon was the candidate who beat the establishment's choice. But that can't be the whole story. Abdul El-Sayed also beat the party's preferred candidate in Michigan's primary, and Schumer's network spent about $47 million for him.7 And the governors' committee held back from Jolly, about as safe a nominee as Democrats get. The pattern points at the state. Somewhere along the way the national party decided Florida was gone, and this year nobody re-marked the position.
The hindsight objection
The fair objection is that this is hindsight. Florida was close because the whole country moved; the party just rode a wave it didn't make. The numbers say something more specific. Democrats ran about 13 to 15 points ahead of 2024 nationally.36 The red states the committees paid for moved more than that: Texas by about 26 points, Kansas by 21, Iowa by 17, Ohio by 16. Florida moved 10.37 South Carolina moved 22 on almost no committee money, so money isn't the whole explanation either. But Florida, the one state the committees skipped outright, is also the one big red state that moved less than the country did. You can read that as a state that resisted the wave, or as a state nobody paid to push. I think it's mostly the second, and I can't prove it, because the experiment was never run.
Fig 4 · Who moved more than the waveTrump-won states · Senate 2026
The states the committees paid for beat the national swing. Florida trailed it.
Swing toward Democrats from the 2024 presidential margin to the 2026 Senate margin, in points. The gray band is the national shift.
2024 margins from certified state results; 2026 Senate margins from AP counts at 98–99% reporting. National: House popular vote about D+13 (projected) to a +15 shift (NYT estimate). Alaska is omitted; its count runs to Nov 18.
Party money might not have been enough. Spending to help Moody ran $27.7 million to Nixon's $21.6 million, and $13.5 million of Moody's side came from Stronger Safer Nation, a super PAC whose donors include Ken Griffin.9 The Republican Senate committees mostly stayed out too: the Senate Leadership Fund spent $30,000 in Florida.9 In Kansas it put in $14 million in early October as the race tightened, and Democratic super PACs followed with about $8 million more.38 Money follows money, so a Democratic buy in Florida would likely have drawn a response, and the price was never a free option. My estimate is that another $15 to $20 million from Schumer's side in October would have made it roughly a 40/60 race, still against her, instead of the write-off it was treated as. That is about 3 percent of what the two committees raised this cycle. Nixon herself asked on Tuesday night what would have happened with more investment early on.39
What was on the table was more than one seat. A Democratic senator from Florida would have been the first since 2018, in a state Trump carried by 13 points two years ago, with 30 electoral votes in 2028. I came of political age watching Florida decide the 2000 election by 537 votes, and I don't think it has ever stopped being the state where a few hundred thousand dollars a point matters most.
Whose checks they were
Primary voters pick the nominee, and the committee decides whether the nominee gets to compete. Robert Caro tells how a young Lyndon Johnson, in the fall of 1940, made himself the channel through which Texas money reached Democratic House candidates, and how quickly the congressmen who got the checks learned whose checks they were.40 A leader who chooses which races get money is also choosing which senators will owe him. At 54 seats, Democrats control the Senate either way; what's left for the leader to shape is which Democrats sit in it.
That matters most where Democratic voters have moved and their senators haven't. Nixon called Israel's war in Gaza a genocide and took no AIPAC money; donors giving through AIPAC's PAC sent Moody about $620,000.41 On April 15, 40 of the 47 members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted for a resolution to block a sale of bulldozers to Israel, and Schumer and Gillibrand were among the seven who voted no.42 I'm not claiming Gaza decided Florida; the pattern above says the state did. But the effect on the caucus is the same either way, one fewer senator likely to vote to block the next sale.
Nikki Fried, who chairs the Florida Democratic Party, said on Tuesday night that writing Florida off "is a mistake no one should make again."43 Last week I predicted El-Sayed would win Michigan, and he did. I'd have given Florida worse odds than Michigan, but nowhere near zero, and Jolly's result says it was closer than I would have guessed. Moody is on the ballot again in 2028 and Nixon has all but said she's running,44 so Schumer's committees have two years of warning. Mark Florida at zero again and nobody gets to call it an oversight.
Sources
All election figures are unofficial counts as of Nov 4, 2026. Money figures are FEC filings compiled by VoteLog through Nov 2 unless noted. "Senate Majority PAC's network" means the super PACs it funds: WinSenate, Texas Forever, North Star and The Georgia Way.
Written by Vikas Erraballi. Every number was checked against the source listed; how this piece was made. Charts show unofficial counts and pre-election filings, and will be updated when the FEC's post-election reports arrive.