Florida Midterm Odds 2026: Every Paid Close Race Went to the Favourite

Every close Florida race that Polymarket has paid out went to the market's favourite: 10 of 10. At their prices on the eve of the vote, about 8.1 of them should have won. On a night when close-race favourites fell in other states, Florida's held. No state had more close races paid by Polymarket, and none beat its prices by as much.

Byron Donalds was 65.5% to become governor and won by about 1.3 points on the unofficial count. Ashley Moody was 87.5% in the Senate race and won by about 2.9. Both results fell inside the margin bracket the market had made its single likeliest.

How to read the prices: a Polymarket contract pays $1 if its outcome happens, so a price of 70 cents is a 70% chance. Prices here are from the eve of the vote, 6:59 pm Eastern on 2 November, unless we say otherwise. This page reads the public price record; it is not a forecast and not advice to trade.

Polymarket gave Byron Donalds a 65.5% chance of becoming governor on the eve of the vote. That is a favourite, not a sure thing, and the market's own margin market showed how close it thought the race could be. The single likeliest result it priced was Donalds by 0 to 3 points, at 25.0%. David Jolly by 0 to 3 points was close behind at 23.3%. Donalds won by about 1.3 points on the unofficial count, 50.0% to 48.7%, in the bracket the market had made its likeliest.

Money followed the race. About $4.9 million changed hands on the governor's market between the eve of the vote and the last poll close, which made it one of the busiest race markets in the country that night. The Senate race drew about $1.2 million.

In the Senate race, Ashley Moody was priced at 87.5%. The public polls had her about six points ahead. She won by about 2.9 points on the unofficial count, much closer than the polls suggested, and again inside the bracket the market had made its single likeliest, Moody by 0 to 3 points at 25.1%. The attorney general's market gave James Uthmeier a 73.0% chance. He won by about 1.9 points, and that market has already paid out.

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Florida elected 28 members of the House. In the close races, those where the favourite was priced under 90 cents on the eve of the vote, Polymarket has paid 8, and every one went to the favourite. With the governor and Senate races that makes 10 of 10. At their prices, about 8.1 should have won, so the market was, if anything, a little cautious about Florida. Ten races is a small sample; the limits are below.

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Florida's 2026 congressional map targeted four Democratic seats: the 9th, 14th, 22nd and 25th. The market did not believe the new lines would work everywhere. It made the Democrats favourites in three of them: Kathy Castor in the 14th at 77.5%, Pia Dandiya in the 22nd at 75.5% and Jared Moskowitz in the 25th at 81.5%. All three won.

The fourth, the 9th around Orlando and Kissimmee, is where the market sided with the map. It priced the Republican, Dan Green, at 63.5%. Darren Soto leads the count by 1,477 votes. If he holds on, it will be Florida's only upset of the night.

Polymarket also ran a market on who would carry Miami-Dade in the Senate race. A week before the vote it was a coin flip, 49.5% for Angie Nixon. By the eve it had moved to 58.0%. With every precinct counted, Nixon carried Miami-Dade by about seven points, 53.0% to 45.9%, on the county elections office's unofficial count, even as Moody won the state. The Miami Herald's precinct analysis describes the same shift. Broward was never in doubt for Nixon.

The market on how many Florida House seats the Democrats would win was spread wide on the eve of the vote. Seven was the single likeliest number, at 15.0%, with every count from four to nine priced above 10%. It now trades at eight.

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Five Florida House races were not decided when we wrote this, and three of them are close to Florida's recount line. The state holds a machine recount when the margin is half a percentage point or less, judged on the unofficial returns due at noon on Saturday, 7 November.

In the 27th, María Elvira Salazar leads Eliott Rodriguez by 1,116 votes, 0.45 points, inside the line; WLRN reports the race appears headed for a recount. In the 9th, Darren Soto leads Dan Green by 1,477 votes, 0.52 points, just outside it. In the 7th, Ryan Elijah leads Bale Dalton by 1,906 votes, 0.59 points. Republicans also lead in the 13th and the 26th.

None of these five races is counted in the 10 of 10. The margin and county markets settle when the results are certified, and we will add them then.

Markets: 30 Polymarket race-winner markets for Florida's governor, Senate and 28 House seats, plus the margin, county, seat-count and attorney general markets, taken from the list of 13,186 midterm contracts fixed before the vote for the 2026 midterm scorecard. About $11.0 million was traded on the race-winner markets over their lifetimes.

Prices: the midpoint between the best bid and best ask on Polymarket's public order books, recorded by Vultax every hour. The eve of the vote is the recording that finished at 23:59 UTC on 2 November.

Results: a race counts as decided only when Polymarket has paid it. The board was read at 16:19 UTC on 4 November 2026. The state comparison counts, for every state, the races priced under 90 cents on the eve that Polymarket had paid by then, and compares the favourites' wins with the sum of their prices.

2026 counts: margins and vote counts are unofficial, from NBC News results data and the Miami-Dade, Orange, Indian River and Highlands county election offices on 4 November, checked against AP-based reports. Florida's recount rule is section 102.141(7) of the Florida Statutes.

Trading: dollars traded is the change in each market's traded total between our hourly recordings, from the eve of the vote to the last poll close at 1 am Eastern on 4 November. Other venues are not used.

Limits: ten races on one night is a small sample. If every eve-of-vote price had been exactly right, all ten favourites winning had about a 11% chance, so this result does not show that the market was too cautious, only that it was not wrong in Florida. The 2026 margins and counts are unofficial until Florida certifies them, the five races still counting are left out, and a price is a reading of the market, not a forecast by Vultax.