The Florida gubernatorial race is officially headed for a recount, as late votes have poured in, narrowing the margin by which Republican Ron DeSantis leads Democrat Andrew Gillum.

The late votes are coming from Broward and Palm Beach counties, the Sun-Sentinel reports. According to the latest vote tally from the Florida secretary of state's office, DeSantis leads Gillum by just 0.47 percent. Florida state law requires a mandatory machine recount if the margin between two candidates is less than 0.5 percent.

Gillum conceded the race to DeSantis Tuesday evening, but since the additional ballots have been counted his campaign has released a statement indicating it will seek a recount if necessary.

Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., blasted Broward County election officials in a series of tweets Thursday, accusing Democrats of trying to "steal" the election.

Long but IMPORTANT THREAT ON ELECTIONS IN #FLORIDA.#BayCounty was hit by a Cat 4 Hurricane just 4 weeks ago,yet managed to count votes & submit timely results.

Yet over 41 hours after polls closed #Broward elections office is still counting votes? #Sayfie

1/6

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018

#Broward supervisor:

- says she doesn’t know how many ballots are left to be counted; &

- Isn’t reporting hourly or regularly,but rather releasing thousands of additional votes,often in the overnight hours,that are chipping away at GOP leads

2/6 #Sayfie

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018

#Broward elections department has a history of violating the law:

A court found they improperly handled votes by mail:https://t.co/NOE6qdbWly

Court found they destroyed ballots in 2016 in violation of state & federal law:https://t.co/ywP8qE46J5 #Sayfie

3/6

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018

Now democrat lawyers are descending on #Florida. They have been very clear they aren’t here to make sure every vote is counted.

- They are here to change the results of election; &

- #Broward is where they plan to do it.#Sayfie

4/6

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018

A U.S. Senate seat & a statewide cabinet officer are now potentially in the hands of an elections supervisor with a history of incompetence & of blatant violations of state & federal laws.

Read Here: https://t.co/empQvOOgEb

5/6#Sayfie

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018

#Broward election supervisors ongoing violation of #Florida law requiring timely reporting isn’t just annoying incompetence. It has opened the door for lawyers to come here & try to steal a seat in the U.S. Senate & Florida Cabinet

#Sayfie

6/6

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018

#Florida law requires counties report early voting & vote-by-mail within 30 minutes after polls close. 43 hours after polls closed 2 Democrat strongholds #BrowardCounty & #PalmBeachCounty are still counting & refusing to disclose how many ballots they have left to count. #Sayfie pic.twitter.com/ReXCaOzkZP

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018

Latest ballots dumped by #Broward &/or #PalmBeach flipped Ag Comm race to Dem & shaved another 4k+ from Scott’s lead in Senate race

Since 3am Wed slow drip from these 2 Dem controlled counties cut Scott lead from 54 to 17K. And they refuse to disclose # of ballots they have left pic.twitter.com/2K8hR4D2P2

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 8, 2018

DeSantis currently leads Gillum by 38,515 votes. Likewise, Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott leads his opponent, incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., by roughly 22,000 votes. The Senate race is also headed for a recount.

Historically, election recounts shift vote tallies by hundreds of votes, not tens of thousands. In the 2008 Minnesota race, Democrat Al Franken trailed by 212 votes when a recount was called. After the recount, he won the race by 312 votes. In the most famous election recount in recent memory, during the 2000 presidential election, the margin between Republican George W. Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore was 1,784 votes, with Bush leading. After two recounts, Bush's lead was reduced to just 327 votes, and the case ultimately went to the Supreme Court.

There wasn’t a blue wave, but there might’ve been. Neither was there a red wave, but there might’ve been. So instead, after a year of meltdowns and sideshows, all we got was this lousy stalemate.

As I’ve been saying for a while now, forget all the window dressing and just do the math. We are not a polarized people as much as we are a balkanized one. The divisions are so entrenched culturally now that the list of persuadables continues to shrink. So with most of the contested Senate races taking place within Trump’s 2016 America, and many of the contested House races taking place within Hillary’s 2016 America, we got the results we probably should’ve just predicted all along.

But that didn’t have to be the case. Both parties squandered an opportunity here.

The Democrats should have capitalized better on the unpopularity of a president who thinks restraint is a river in Egypt. Except the word “restraint” isn’t even in their own vocabulary at all. So instead of articulating an alternative governing vision opposite a president with an approval rating below the Mendoza Line and a GOP Congress less popular than toe jam, they paved the road to hell with cruel intentions: calling everyone who dares to disagree a racist, literally Hitler, and only stopping along the way to attempt to destroy the life of a Supreme Court nominee they didn’t like. Labeling Brett Kavanaugh a gang rapist based on flimsier evidence than Rosie O’Donnell’s infamous 9/11 conspiracy theories. Or flimsier than Michael Avenatti’s credibility. Or flimsier than Stormy Daniels’ evening wear. Each of whom were also the face of the Democratic Party during portions of this election cycle. Don’t look now, but every Democrat senator who voted to character-assassinate Kavanaugh lost, and the only one who didn’t (Joe Manchin) won. That’s not a coincidence.

Meanwhile, Republicans should have coasted on the strongest economy since the dot-com boom 20 years ago. Except they committed the worst act of political betrayal since “read my lips” when they broke a seven-year promise to repeal Obamacare. Not to mention their open-borders leadership’s disdain for President Trump’s popular immigration enforcement policies. Then there’s the president’s Twitter feed, whose purpose most days seems to be an intentional exercise in alienating as many suburban women voters as possible — when the president’s not using it to grind his personal political axes rather than promoting his positive economic message, that is.

This is why we didn’t get a wave. We got a stalemate, an election that is almost a replica of the one we just had in 2016. And one we’re likely to see again in 2020 unless one of these parties can answer these questions:

1) Can Democrats, the party that claims it’s for diversity, show that it’s truly willing to accommodate dissent? Or will “you will be made to care” become “you better believe you will %4@#! be made to care when we’re in power since you’re literally Hitler?” For if so, the president will continue to exploit the justifiable fears of voters who might be friendlier to Democrats’ economic message if it didn’t come with the hefty price tag of cultural Marxism.

2) Can the president practice a modicum of adulting, which might give those suburban voters he’s alienating permission to praise him for the policy decisions he’s making that are making their lives better? Or will his random ego-in-motion act continue to show its backside on social media daily?

The race for U.S. Senate in Florida will have a mandatory recount, with the margin between Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson within half a percent.

"We are proceeding to a recount," Nelson said Wednesday in a statement.

Scott leads Nelson by roughly 35,000 votes out of over 8.1 million votes cast. State law requires a recount when candidates are within one half-point of each other.

Scott declared victory Tuesday night.

Buckle up, folks. Florida recounts are INFAMOUS.

Democrats essentially won a very technical election last night, fueled by several unique factors giving them the advantage in the House this election cycle. These factors were absent in the Senate races and will likely be absent in many of the 2020 House races as well as in the presidential race. There are potential warning signs for Republicans, but a lot of opportunities if they learn the right lessons.

Let’s delve into the key observations. I will try to elaborate on each point in the coming days:

1) Not bad historically for the GOP: It looks like Democrats will pick up roughly 32-34 House seats and flip control of the House with a 10-seat majority. But Republicans picked up three or four Senate seats. Historically, the number of House seats lost is in line with the sort of backlash the incumbent party incurs in a midterm, especially when they control all branches of government. The fact that they were able to win in the Senate and buck the trend is due to the polarized map working in their favor, but also shows that this was not a historic repudiation of Trump. Obama lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats in 2010. Republicans lost five governorships last night (Obama lost six), but some of that was due to bad candidate recruitment and overexposure in blue states. They lost seven legislative chambers, not nearly as many as Democrats did and not bad considering the high-water mark they were occupying headed into the election.

2) This was a realignment, not a wave, even though Republicans were on the short end of it in the House and the better end in the Senate. Republicans reached a high-water mark of power in a lot of House seats, governorships, and state legislatures following the 2010, 2014, and 2016 victories. What we saw last night was the natural blowback against the incumbent party, mixed with the completion of the realignment of suburban-rural districts to Republicans and suburban-urban districts to Democrats. Ultimately, the red areas got redder, the blue ones got bluer, and Republicans were on the short end of the battle for swing voters in a midterm. Thus, in the Senate, they won red states (but lost Nevada), but they could not hold enough House seats in suburban territory. There are warning signs for both parties in this dynamic. Republicans are losing in suburban Houston, Charleston, and even Oklahoma City. But Democrats are losing the last of the FDR coalition of blue-collar workers in the traditional Democrat rural areas.

3) Money matters: Unlike previous wave elections, such as 1994, 2006, and 2010, money was a dominant factor. Democrats had the unprecedented advantage of outspending Republicans, often two or three to one, not just in the toss-ups but in a number of relatively safe GOP districts. This is how they put so many districts in play. There’s no question that without the financial disadvantage, people like Dave Brat would have won re-election. Remember, this financial edge will disappear in 2020, when Democrats will have a presidential candidate sucking up all the oxygen and money, not to mention a very open and competitive presidential primary that will drain funds. The bottom line is that money matters a lot, which is ironic given the supposed concern of Democrats about money in politics. There is no way O’ Rourke would have done so well in Texas had he not spent as much money on the Senate seat as presidential candidates used to spend on national races until fairly recently.

4) The top of the ballot killed the GOP in critical states: For voters who hate Trump (and their hate is the primary factor driving their turnout), this election was essentially a presidential election. For all intents and purposes, Trump was on the ballot. We incurred all the liabilities of Trump’s realignment in that sense. But we left too much of his benefit on the table in many parts of the country. Where we had a unified message with good candidates who ran as conservatives and motivated the base, such as Ron DeSantis, we overcame the predicted blue wave. But in states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, and Illinois, Republicans were comatose at the top of the ticket and Trump himself wasn’t on the ballot. Thus, while the blue turnout was in full force as if it were a presidential election, Trump voters (or suburban voters who think Democrats are too radical) were stuck with no options at the top of the ticket. Republicans lost 12 seats just in those four states alone. The wipeout in those states would not happen with Trump on the ballot, assuming his strength remains roughly where it is today. I would argue that had Trump been on the ballot, Republicans would likely have held the House.

By my count, Republicans lost 16 of the 25 Hillary districts they held, but they also lost roughly an equal number of Trump districts. In other words, Democrats relied on the one-sided liability of Trump off the ballot, the financial edge, and anomalies at the top of the ticket to help win in areas they should lose in 2020. Also, remember that Republicans can now target a dozen other incumbent House Democrats in Trump districts in 2020. With Trump actually on the ballot, Republicans will further benefit from the realignment of blue-collar whites against those incumbents.

5) Nothing fundamentally changed for months: The contours of this election were already set within a few months after the last election. Once Trump’s personality became a problem with certain suburban voters and Republicans failed to enact an agenda to inspire them back into the fold, they lost those voters. This was evident in the polling as early as the spring of 2017 and was reflected in the special elections as well as the November 2017 Virginia local elections. The only thing that changed in the GOP’s favor is that its base, which was asleep during the special elections, ultimately came out in force. Some of that was inevitable, and some of it was turbocharged by Kavanaugh. I don’t think Republicans did anything in the past few weeks to fundamentally help or hurt their standing. This liability was baked into the cake a while back.