DDHQ shifts Florida governor race to toss-up

Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) shifted the Florida governor’s race to a toss-up amid a rough electoral environment for Republicans as they head into the midterms.

In a post on the social platform X Wednesday, DDHQ said that the race had gone from “Leans Republican” to “Toss Up.” DDHQ stated that Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.), the Republican nominee in the race, currently has a 60 percent chance of winning, an 8-point drop from earlier this month.

Donalds’s challenger, Democrat David Jolly, currently has a 40 percent chance of taking the election.

The apparent tightening of the race for Florida’s top job in a state that President Trump has won in the last three elections may be a warning sign for Republicans as the midterms approach.

Republicans are facing the unpopularity of the war in Iran, Trump’s sagging approval numbers and polling favoring Democrats as they attempt to keep control of Congress.

Donalds removed some mentions of Trump’s name in a newer layout for his website Tuesday. The old layout featured a banner at the top of Donalds’s webpage that read, “Chip in to Support Trump Endorsed Byron Donalds,” and text below it that said, “TRUMP-ENDORSED.”

If users were to go down on the page, there was another bar that noted the endorsement next to a photo of Trump.

Donalds’s newer layout only showed Trump’s endorsement in a box next to other endorsements for the Florida representative. A Donalds campaign source told The Hill that Trump remained “all over the website” and that the president’s support “is worth its weight in gold, and we are grateful to have it.”

Other Republican candidates facing tight races , Rep. Ashley Hinson (Iowa), who is running for Senate, and former Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich.), making an upper chamber bid in the Wolverine State, recently distanced themselves from the president on the subject of the Iran war, with both noting its effect on the cost of living.