Orlando’s Val Demings to face Marco Rubio in Florida Senate race | Florida News | Orlando

Former Orlando Police Chief and current House Rep. Val Demings will face off with Marco Rubio for one of Florida’s two Senate seats this November.

Demings won the Democratic nom handily in a night of lopsided primary results. She pulled in over 80% of the vote and none of her challengers cracked 10% of the vote total.

Some polls suggest that Demings has quite a bit of ground to cover if she wants to close the gap between herself and Rubio in the upcoming election. Rubio has held his Senate seat for more than a decade and a recent temperature check by Center Street PAC showed him winning an outright majority of likely voters in the statewide race.

Other polls taken earlier in the month by the University of North Florida and Change Research showed Demings either winning or tying in a contest against Rubio, though neither of those polls showed a candidate winning a majority of voters.

It’s unclear how much support Demings will receive from the national party and whether they view her race as winnable. She’s been a formidable fundraiser on her own, however, outspending her primary opponents at a rate of 170 to 1.