The Democratic Party’s dominant election victories across the country did not translate into victory in the Florida Senate race. While the DSA-aligned Angie Nixon (D) outperformed Democratic candidates in 2024 and 2022, she still fell short of Senator Ashley Moody (R) by nearly three percentage points, or a quarter million votes, according to the unofficial results. The outcome suggests that, however much Democratic Socialism may dominate in progressive bastions, the ideology still has limited appeal nationwide.

As of Wednesday morning, with nearly all the votes counted, Moody held 50.87% of the vote to Nixon’s 47.98%, a 2.9% margin of victory, or 239,000 votes. That is a substantial margin of victory, even in a national environment that overwhelmingly favored Democrats.

In 2024, Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) romped to reelection by a 12.8% margin of victory, and former Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) won 16.4% in 2022. Both enjoyed the power of incumbency and national environments favorable to Republicans.

While technically an incumbent, Moody was appointed to fill Rubio’s seat and had never stood for election on her own. Thus, while she did win by a smaller margin, some of that is due to the national environment, and some is due to incumbency. In a year when Democrats won Texas’s Senate seat (the other big GOP state) by 1.1 million votes (12.1%), their failure to even come close to victory in Florida suggests that another factor is at play.

That factor is likely the radicalism of the Democratic candidate, Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Florida’s electorate features substantial numbers of Cuban and Venezuelan emigrants (and descendants of emigrants), who recognize and reject socialism more readily than other Americans, who never had to flee from its evils.

For example, at a June 11, 2026 campaign stop at Greater Bethel AME Church, Nixon quoted “a famous freedom fighter … Assata Shakur,” more accurately known as convicted cop-killer Joanne Chesimard. The former Black Panther escaped from prison, where she was serving a murder sentence, and lived in Cuba as a fugitive from U.S. justice until her reported death. Such an association would do nothing to endear Nixon to voters whose families fled Cuban socialism for American freedom.

To make matters worse, the quote Nixon pulled from Chesimard directly invoked the Communist Manifesto. “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains,” Nixon quoted. Then she riffed on that last line, “We have nothing to lose. We have nothing to lose. We have absolutely nothing to lose but our chains.” Surely those who fled from socialism would recognize the origin of this famous sentence.

Nixon’s radicalism extended from her affiliations to her policies. Alongside “Medicare for All” and “comprehensive [health care] coverage,” Nixon’s campaign website declared she would prioritize “protecting reproductive freedom,” which was defined to include “the right to abortion, contraception, and IVF, free from political interference.” In an August interview, Nixon criticized Florida’s 2023 “Protection of Children Act,” insisting that drag shows were “wholesome entertainment.”

Nixon also articulated the anti-Semitism now in vogue among Democrats. In November 2023, as a Florida state legislator, she introduced a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, before Israel had won back its hostages — a resolution that not even other legislative Democrats would support. More recently, she supported cutting off all military aid to Israel because she claimed the nation is “violating human rights.”

Nixon’s other highlights include wanting “to put the DEI policies back in place,” comparing federal immigration enforcement to “modern-day slave catching almost,” and disrupting state business in Tallahassee.

On April 21, 2022, during a debate over redistricting, Nixon and five colleagues occupied the House well and refused the speaker’s instruction to leave. They chanted, “Stop the Black attack,” and sang, “We Shall Overcome.” The House was forced to call a recess for an hour, after which it returned to order and passed the redistricting bills literally over the heads of Nixon and one other member, who still sat in the House well like petulant children.

On April 29, 2026, Nixon disrupted another redistricting debate and attempted to shout down the speaker with a hot-pink megaphone she had smuggled onto the floor. “What y’all are doing is illegal!” she yelled. That stunt earned Nixon a rare formal reprimand from the House Rules and Ethics Committee on May 14. “I don’t care if I get a reprimand,” Nixon responded defiantly. “I don’t even care if they expel me. … Stop doing illegal things, and I won’t call you out with a pink microphone.”

On May 15, the day after her reprimand, Nixon staged a five-hour sit-in protest in Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R) office. When Capitol Police ordered her to leave, Nixon repeatedly refused, leading to her arrest. Nixon was scheduled to receive a jury trial in late September, but she resolved the criminal charges by agreeing to pay a $250 fine and perform 15 hours of community service, her campaign said. The repeated antics made it seem like Nixon was almost trying to make herself a martyr.

As a member of the DSA, Nixon represents a radical strand of politics gaining new momentum among progressive Democrats. After socialist-aligned Democrats gained surprising victories in far-left enclaves like New York City, some proponents had talked themselves into believing that their ideas would sweep the nation, and that their triumph was inevitable.

Nixon’s failure to capture the U.S. Senate seat in Florida demonstrates the hard limits to the DSA’s appeal. Even amid a historic “blue wave,” socialism still cannot capture Florida.