Tuesday’s election marks an historic red wave in Florida from the Presidential race to constitutional amendment proposals, down to local political contests. Florida’s electoral college votes helped President Elect Donald Trump secure a second term. Florida Republican U.S. Senator Rick Scott won a second term by a wider margin than polls had predicted. No Republican-held U.S. House seats from Florida flipped and the GOP maintains supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.
Governor Ron DeSantis led successful efforts to defeat amendments that sought to legalize recreational marijuana and to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Only two of the six constitutional amendment proposals on the statewide ballot passed, including a measure to tie inflation to a Homestead Property Tax Exemption for homeowners, and an effort to establish a constitutional right to hunt and fish in Florida.
WGCU’s “Southwest Florida in Focus” host Sandra Viktorova provides some post-election analysis in a conversation with Florida Gulf Coast University Political Science professor Sandra Pavelka, Ph.D., and WGCU host/reporter John Davis.
