Ashley Moody fended off a challenge from Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, to win Florida’s special election and retain her seat in the US Senate.

It was the first election win for the Republican, who was appointed by Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis in January 2025, when Marco Rubio became US secretary of state. Moody will serve the remainder of his term until the 2028 election.

Polling in the run-up to Tuesday gave Moody a clear but narrow advantage, which Nixon sought to close and overcome with the support of prominent progressive Democrats.

Both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied last month with Nixon in central Florida, an immigrant-heavy section of the state where the Trump administration’s harsh detention and deportation policies have proved unpopular.

The contest was also a gauge of whether Florida remained reliably Republican, after the party built a 1.5 million-voter advantage in registrations, or if Democrats – shut out in statewide races for a decade – had made progress towards restoring Florida’s lost status as a key battleground.

Moody, during campaign appearances, focused on denouncing Nixon as a “socialist”, and portrayed her alignment with the Democratic Socialists of America as evidence she was intent on defunding the police and the US military, abolishing prisons and supporting unchecked immigration and noncitizen voting.

Moody lauded Trump’s immigration policies but, mindful of the president’s strong disapproval ratings over the Iran war and high gas prices, largely refrained from praising him personally.

Nixon campaigned vigorously on affordability and corruption in politics, frequently referring to Moody’s role as Florida’s attorney general in the so-called Hope Florida scandal, in which DeSantis’s administration diverted a $10m Medicaid payout to political committees.

“I don’t want to abolish prisons, because I want Ashley Moody in one of them,” she said in an interview that provided one of her campaign’s most viral moments.