Polling averages show the gubernatorial race between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly to be too close to call.
But even though Donalds acknowledges that this is a “closer” election than those in 2022 and 2024, he still believes he will pull it out in November.
“Somebody’s going to have a bad night in 29 days, and it’s not going to be me,” the Naples Congressman said during a Pinellas County event highlighting his Coastal Corridor waterways proposals.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Donalds as telling donors he was in a “battle” with Jolly. But that gloom and doom was not on offer during the news conference.
“Look, we feel good about it. You just have to work through it because each election is different. If any Republican in Florida is walking around saying, ‘Man, this is going to be a cakewalk because Gov. (Ron) DeSantis won by 19 points four years ago,’ that is the completely wrong mindset to bring to a campaign,” he said.
“The old adage is the correct one: you run like you’re 10 points down. That’s how I’ve always conducted myself, whether in a Primary or a General Election.”
U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna was on hand for Monday’s event, and she repeated her assertion made this weekend that Jolly is 10 points down in Florida’s 13th Congressional District, which she represents and which Jolly represented years ago under a different map. She defended “push polls” in her remarks, which suggests that the polling questions may have been engineered to drive a particular result.
Whether Luna’s polling reflects reality remains to be seen.
But what is much less debatable is Donalds’ gargantuan financial advantage. He has raised more than $135 million between his campaign account and his Friends of Byron Donalds political committee.
In the week ending Sept. 25, Jolly raised just over $1.05 million between his campaign account and his Florida 2026 political committee. That was his strongest week of fundraising since August.
On Monday, Jolly shared a POLITICO article highlighting his need for money. He excerpted his own quote.
“We don’t have a Democratic President; we don’t have the person who says, ‘If we win Florida, Texas and Georgia, the road to the White House is restructured,’” he said.
With just 29 days to go until the election, time is running out for someone to make that argument to give Jolly the resources he says he wants.
A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. His work also can be seen in the Washington Post, the New York Post, the Washington Times, and National Review, among other publications. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski
October 5, 2026 at 10:36 pm
A recent Fl Politics article reported Jolly being a vegetarian and now that he is campaigning announced he has decided to eat meat. Insane!, this shows Jolly will lie even to himself for a grift. This guy Jolly was a pro life advocate then he decides he wants to do a democrat grift so how he is even trojan horsing himself. I mean come on, who can ever trust someone who has to fake their own eating habits to try to get votes. Jolly is a disaster and a fake.
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