Republican Ashley Moody defeats progressive Angie Nixon to hold Florida Senate seat

Republican Ashley Moody has defeated Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, in Florida's special Senate election, retaining her seat in the US Senate.

The contest was seen as a measure of whether Florida remains reliably Republican, or whether that position is changing.

It was the first election win for Moody, a Republican. Florida's governor Ron DeSantis appointed her to the seat in January 2025, when Marco Rubio became US secretary of state. Moody will serve the remainder of his term until the 2028 election.

Polling in the run-up to Tuesday's vote gave Moody a clear but narrow advantage, which Nixon sought to close and overcome with the support of prominent progressive Democrats.

Both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied last month with Nixon in central Florida, an immigrant-heavy section of the state where the Trump administration's harsh detention and deportation policies have proved unpopular.

Republicans have built a 1.5 million-voter advantage in registrations in Florida. Democrats, by contrast, have been shut out in statewide races for a decade, and the race was a test of whether they had made progress towards restoring Florida's lost status as a key battleground.

During campaign appearances, Moody focused on denouncing Nixon as a 'socialist'. She portrayed Nixon's alignment with the Democratic Socialists of America as evidence she was intent on defunding the police and the US military, abolishing prisons and supporting unchecked immigration and noncitizen voting.

Moody lauded Trump's immigration policies but, mindful of the president's strong disapproval ratings over the Iran war and high gas prices, largely refrained from praising him personally.

Nixon campaigned vigorously on affordability and corruption in politics, frequently referring to Moody's role as Florida's attorney general in the so-called Hope Florida scandal, in which DeSantis's administration diverted a $10m Medicaid payout to political committees.

'I don't want to abolish prisons, because I want Ashley Moody in one of them,' Nixon said in an interview that provided one of her campaign's most viral moments.