Former President Donald Trump rolled to a long-expected victory in Florida’s presidential preference primary on Tuesday, earning him another huge tranche of delegate votes en route to a November rematch with President Joe Biden.
The Associated Press called the race for Trump as polls closed in the Panhandle at 8 p.m. Trump got 81% of approximately 1.1 million votes counted, according to the Florida Division of Elections’ tracker, followed by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 13.9% and Gov. Ron DeSantis at 3.7%.
Trump had already secured his party’s presidential nomination with victories in primaries on March 12, but winning his adopted home state gives him that much more steam heading into this summer’s Republican National Convention.
Trump’s win was in little doubt after DeSantis and Haley, his top primary challengers, ended their campaigns in January and March, respectively.
So assured was the outcome that Trump spent hardly any time campaigning here in recent months, attending more court hearings than rallies in Florida in 2024.
After casting his ballot in Palm Beach, Trump was asked by a reporter whom he voted for.
“Did somebody just say, ‘Who’d you vote for?’” he said with a laugh. “Yeah, I voted for Donald Trump.”
Trump’s support was slightly weaker among Floridians who voted early and by mail, with DeSantis and Haley combining for more than a quarter of those votes in some parts of the state. In Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties, Trump had 72.5% of mail-in votes, followed by Haley at 23% and DeSantis at 4.5%. Conversely, Trump garnered 90% of Tampa Bay’s in-person vote on Tuesday, with Haley and DeSantis at 6.9% and 3.1%, respectively.
Overall, Trump scored nearly 78% of the vote in Tampa Bay, compared with 16.5% for Haley and 4.1% for DeSantis. In Palm Beach County, where Trump lives and votes, the former president earned a little more than 78% of the vote.
DeSantis’ best finish came in Leon County, where he lives in Tallahassee and ended up with 7.4%. (DeSantis’ office did not respond to multiple requests about how or whether he voted.)
Trump’s resounding win in Florida nevertheless falls short of his margins last week in Georgia (85%) and Mississippi (92.7%).
Florida voters and elections supervisors saw no significant issues Tuesday, Secretary of State Cord Byrd said.
Well, except for one — low turnout of about 20%, Byrd said. That’s the lowest turnout in a presidential preference primary in Florida since 2004, which was also 20%. In Tampa Bay, Pinellas County saw turnout of 29.5%, followed by Hillsborough at 22.8% and Pasco at 18.9%.
In conversation with the state’s 67 elections supervisors, ”the No. 1 thing is they wanted more people to come out,” Byrd said.
Other than that, it was a good test run for the general election, he said.
”The main takeaway from today is that we didn’t have any issues and it’s why Florida is the gold standard,” Byrd said.
The Florida Democratic Party canceled its presidential primary this year, throwing its support behind Biden, who also clinched his party’s nomination last week. As a result, this marked the first time since the modern primary system took shape in the 1970s that both parties’ presidential nominations were mathematically sewn up before Floridians voted.
In 2004, John Kerry was the Democrats’ presumptive nominee heading into Florida, after most other candidates had ended their campaigns, but he didn’t have a clinching number of delegates until afterward. And in 2000, both George W. Bush and Al Gore had all but wrapped up their nominations early, but didn’t officially clinch until Florida and other southern states held their primaries.
Arizona, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio also held Republican presidential primaries on Tuesday. The Associated Press called Ohio for Trump just before 7:45 p.m., followed by Illinois a half-hour later, Kansas at 9 p.m. Eastern and Arizona at 11 p.m. Eastern.
Around Tampa Bay, Trump’s dominance of the ballot — and the Democrats opting not to have a presidential primary — may have boosted Republican turnout for local mayoral and city council races across Pinellas County.
In Clearwater, nonpartisan candidates endorsed by the Pinellas GOP won the mayor’s seat and two City Council seats. A GOP-backed charter amendment that would change city election dates also passed. In a statement, Republican Party of Florida Chairperson Evan Power called it a “clean sweep.”
“From Delray Beach to Clearwater and from Winter Garden to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, the Florida GOP remains committed to electing Republicans up and down the ballot — in every corner of the state,” he said in a statement.
In at least one local race, the party’s support wasn’t enough, as a Pinellas GOP-backed candidate for Oldsmar City Council was trailing by 9 percentage points with most ballots counted.
Times staff writers Romy Ellenbogen, Lawrence Mower and Langston Taylor contributed to this report.