Will Ashley Moody win her first Senate election in Florida?

Ashley Moody has never won a Senate election, but Florida's politics make her a heavy favorite to keep the seat she was appointed to. Governor Ron DeSantis appointed her in January 2025 to the seat Marco Rubio vacated to become secretary of state, and on November 3, she faces voters for the first time, against Democratic state Representative Angie Nixon.

Two September polls call the race a tie, yet Kalshi's market has Moody at a 90% probability of winning.

• St. Pete Polls, a Florida firm, had the race level at 45% each on September 17
• Change Research, which works for Democratic campaigns, found a tie at 47% about a week earlier
• Every other poll this year shows Moody ahead, and the RealClearPolitics average puts her up five points, a more typical margin for a Republican in this state.

Florida's recent record also shows that polls here tend to understate Republican strength. In 2024, the final eight polls had Senator Rick Scott ahead by less than five points on average, but he won by almost 13 points. St. Pete Polls, the same firm behind this month's tie, had Scott up just three in its final poll of that race, so a five-point Moody lead in the average could easily translate into a double-digit win.

On top of that, the pattern plays out in a voter pool that already tilts heavily in Moody's direction. In the August 18 primary, she alone got 1,320,780 votes, more than all the candidates in the Democratic primary combined. And Republicans outnumber Democrats on Florida's voter rolls by 1.55 million, giving Moody a huge advantage.

Moody's registration edge explains why her recent scandal has not flipped the race. On August 27, a Florida grand jury reported that $10 million from a Medicaid settlement, which Moody's office signed as attorney general, went to the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit created by First Lady Casey DeSantis, and from there to political groups. But the jury found too little evidence to charge anyone and did not suggest Moody knew where the money would end up.

Although this story has dented Moody's numbers just enough to produce a couple of tied polls, the 1.55 million voter registration gap is too large to overcome in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since Bill Nelson in 2012. We expect Moody to win.