Rubio cruises to reelection win, outperforms polls

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio is projected to win his reelection bid, with the results showing him vastly outperforming polls that showed a closer race.

With 78% of the vote in, the Associated Press called the race, with Rubio having 56.4% of the total, compared to Democratic rival Val Demings with 42.6%. He will thus continue into a third term in the Senate having first secured the seat in 2010.

Election forecaster RealClearPolitics gave Rubio an 8.8% lead over Demings in its average rating. His current, 13.8% margin represents a significant improvement over that projection and could signal a larger trend of GOP over-performance on Tuesday night.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis also easily won reelection by an even larger margin.