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Republican Ryan Elijah has held Florida’s 7th Congressional District, finishing 1,631 votes ahead of Democrat Bale Dalton after the final unofficial tallies, a margin of 0.503 percent that sits just above Florida’s 0.5 percent threshold for an automatic recount.
Elijah declared victory on Saturday, November 7, saying the Florida Department of State had confirmed no automatic recount would take place. The district covers all of Seminole County and part of Volusia County, and Democrats had hoped to flip the seat in a midterm cycle that saw the party make gains across the country.
Elijah took 161,300 votes to Dalton’s 159,669, with Libertarian Christopher Dennison on 3,485, according to Associated Press results. Unofficial returns from every county were due to the state Division of Elections by noon on Saturday, and those figures determine whether a race meets the threshold for an automatic recount under Florida law. The Associated Press had not yet called the race.
The margin was so tight that nine more votes for Dalton would have pushed the race inside the threshold and triggered a recount, according to Central Florida Public Media. Canvassing boards added fewer than 300 new votes across the two undecided Central Florida congressional races in the final count, far fewer than would have been needed to change the outcome of either.
More votes may still be tallied in the coming days. Uniformed and overseas voters can request 10-day extensions for their mail-in ballots under the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, so ballots could still trickle in by the end of next week. Elijah’s camp said the remaining overseas ballots could not mathematically erase his lead.
Elijah, a former FOX 35 Orlando television anchor, won the Republican nomination in August by defeating incumbent Rep. Cory Mills, who lost the primary amid a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that he violated campaign finance laws. Dalton, a Navy veteran and former senior NASA official, had hoped to ride a wave of Democratic enthusiasm to win a seat with no incumbent on the ticket, and his campaign raised triple what Elijah’s brought in.
The closeness of the race stood in sharp contrast to recent results in the district. Mills won the seat by 13.1 percentage points in 2024 and by 17.1 points in 2022, and voters in the district backed President Donald Trump by 12.5 points in 2024. The Cook Political Report had rated the race “Likely Republican” before changing it to “Lean Republican” four days before the election.
Democrat Darren Soto also held his seat in the neighbouring 9th District, leading Republican Dan Green by 0.53 percent, a margin of 1,506 votes, which likewise sits just outside the recount threshold.