News · Politics
Major US outlets project Mario Díaz-Balart's re-election in Florida by 1,704 votes
The Cuban American Republican congressman holds District 26 with 114,578 votes against 112,874 for Democrat Nicole Locklin, who does not concede and is demanding access to election records, according to Martí Noticias and Periódico Cubano.
Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, NBC and Fox News declared Mario Díaz-Balart the winner on Monday in one of South Florida's closest congressional races, six days after the midterm elections, according to Martí Noticias. Results from the Florida Division of Elections give him 114,578 votes, 49.86%, against 112,874 votes, 49.12%, for Nicole Locklin; the third candidate, independent Deborah Ann Meidinger Hosey, received 2,352 votes, 1.02%.
The gap between the two leading candidates was 1,704 votes. Election officials in Miami-Dade and Broward said the review process continues and that some outstanding ballots could be counted while others may be excluded, but that their number is not enough to reverse the Republican's lead or to reach the margin that would force a recount, triggered below 0.5%.
Locklin does not accept the results. She said she had been ahead at the end of election night in the votes recorded by Associated Press, and the agency later stated this was a data entry error that it corrected. The Democrat maintains that questions remain over roughly 3,000 votes that appeared in the results first released and then disappeared, and she has demanded access to election records, with the option of going to court if she does not receive the documents.
Díaz-Balart, first elected to Congress in 2002 and a member of the House since 2003, is the longest-serving legislator in Florida's delegation. In the outgoing Congress he has been vice chair of the Appropriations Committee and chaired the subcommittee handling funds for national security, the State Department and related programmes. He will begin his thirteenth term in January 2027 and blamed the confusion on the data published by the media, not on official records.
In a statement last week, the congressman said his victory «belongs to the people of this district, who believe in making life more affordable, in cutting taxes, in fiscal responsibility, in supporting our allies and in firmly opposing the communist regimes that still oppress the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua». During the campaign, immigration and the cost of living were among the main issues: Díaz-Balart backed border security while questioning certain excesses in immigration operations, and Locklin proposed widening legal immigration routes and abolishing ICE.
In the same elections, Cuban American Carlos Giménez was also re-elected in Florida's District 28, after defeating Democrat Phil Ehr and independent candidate Eddy Rojas. Giménez, born in Havana, won a fourth consecutive term in Congress, where he has held a seat since January 2021.
Sources: Martí Noticias · Periódico Cubano
Data updated: 2026-11-10T04:15:00.000Z