DORAL, FLA. (WSVN) - At least one key race in South Florida is likely heading to a recount, after vote counts came to razor-thin margins for Florida’s 26th and 27th Districts.
Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia announced on Tuesday afternoon that there would be a recount for the Florida District 27 congressional race if the current margin holds steady.
“The margin in the U.S. Congressional District 27 race currently stands at 0.46%,” she said. “This falls within Florida’s 0.50% threshold for an automatic machine recount. Specifically, 202 vote-by-mail ballots in Congressional District 27 are undergoing the curing process, which gives voters until 5 p.m. Thursday to resolve any signature discrepancies.”
The announcement came after incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar declared an early victory during her election night watch party. Though the race has not been called, Salazar remains ahead of her Democratic opponent, Eliot Rodriguez, by approximately 1,100 votes.
“We prevailed against all odds,” she said.
With Cuban-American backgrounds, both candidates focused on immigration during their campaigns in a heavily Hispanic district with a similar message about change.
Both Rodriguez and Salazar previously worked as broadcast journalists before venturing into politics.
Salazar said that she believes her approach to immigration has made the difference she needed to hold onto her seat.
“Every vote counts, and those people that came out and voted for me, it was immigration, it was immigration,” said Salazar.
During his own Election Day watch party, Rodriguez pointed to the importance of every vote in a race that will be decided on the slimmest of margins.
“If you ever doubted that every vote matters, this is proof that every vote matters. I am not a politician, and I ran out of a feeling that we could do better,” he said.
In another interesting turn of events, the race for District 26 is also neck and neck.
Republican U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who has held the seat for 23 years, is facing an unexpected force in Democrat Nicole Locklin.
“It’s been an uphill battle, we knew it, we knew that this was going to be a very difficult year. But I am so happy and relieved,” said Diaz-Balart.
Diaz-Balart already declared victory after getting 49.9% of the vote, though the race has not yet officially been called. Nicole Locklin is at 49.1%, which falls just out of the threshold for a mandatory recount, but election results will take at least 10 days to be certified.
However, Locklin said that the race is not over yet.
“There’s also 1,800 votes at least in Broward County that haven’t been counted yet, and we don’t know why they haven’t been counted. So we’re all just trying to figure out what is going on so we can get the actual count of the race,” she said.
District 26 was one of several congressional districts that were redrawn by Florida Gov. Ron Desantis. The action appears to have backfired for Republicans, as analysts say that the action removed Collier County from the district and brought in a portion of southwest Broward County, tacking on several Democratic leaning neighborhoods into the district.
As of Wednesday afternoon, neither race has been called.
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