Republican Ron DeSantis defeated Andrew Gillum in the hotly contested race to be Florida's next governor. With nearly all the precincts in the state reporting in, DeSantis had 49.9 percent of the vote compared to Gillum’s 48.8 percent.
Gillum watched an early lead slowly slip away as more votes came in from across the state. Just around 11 pm Gillum conceded the race, saying that he "could not be prouder of the way we ran this race...We recognize that we didn’t win this tonight.”
His loss a huge blow to Democrats, who had hoped to make the election a referendum on President Donald Trump, who made two campaign appearances with DeSantis in the latter stage of the election.
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