Donald Trump, a real-estate mogul who won the Republican presidential nomination in part by knocking off two of Florida's favored sons, appeared to be on track to win the state's 29 electoral votes Tuesday night.

With 94.4 percent of the state's precincts reporting, Trump was leading Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by a healthy margin, 49.2 percent to 47.6 percent. That represented a lead of almost 144,000 votes out of nearly 9.2 million counted.

When courts redrew districts for Florida's congressional delegation and the state Senate, assumptions quickly poured in.

A key House Republican expected to be one of the top lawmakers on education policy next year is fighting to fend off a Democratic challenger who is using his work on school-related legislation as ammunition for her attacks.

Rep. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, is likely in line to chair either the House Education Committee or the House panel that oversees education spending --- but only if he can get past Ivette Gonzalez Petkovich, a 37-year-old attorney, in the Nov. 8 election.

At times, as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have fought each other in the presidential race, the battle between incumbent U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy has seemed like a quiet undercard.

It hasn't helped that national Democrats have been withdrawing their advertising support for Murphy to funnel money to Senate races in other states that seem more promising. Or that Florida plays just as important a role in the race for the White House as it does in the jockeying for control of the Senate --- if not more so.

Fracking, a dispute about a campaign sign and an attempted political comeback have heated up the battle for a North Florida Senate seat in a key swing district.

The outcome of the race between state Rep. Keith Perry, R-Gainesville, and former state Sen. Rod Smith, D-Alachua, could help Democrats in their effort to chip away at the Republican Party's majority in the Senate. Meanwhile, Republicans hope to hold onto the seat as part of their legislative dominance across much of North Florida.

It wasn't hard, at a recent Republican fundraising dinner in Tampa, to listen to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and imagine that you were still hearing a presidential candidate. His themes were decidedly national, focusing on the stakes of the election and the urgency of doing something soon about the country's future.

A major figure in the Clinton White House visited Florida this week as part of a bid for the presidency. The two political parties fought over election rules in court. And there was talk of a rigged election.

Welcome back to 2000.

With their presidential nominee under a cloud of sexual-assault allegations, Florida Republican leaders gathered Saturday at one end of the critical I-4 corridor for their fundraising "Victory Dinner" before a final push toward the November elections.

But those who came to the Hilton Tampa Downtown Hotel banked on one message to help real-estate mogul Donald Trump win in November after the disclosure of vulgar comments about women and a wave of allegations that he repeatedly groped or kissed women against their will: The alternative is worse.

With their presidential nominee under a cloud of sexual-assault allegations, Florida Republican leaders gathered Saturday at one end of the critical I-4 corridor for their fundraising "Victory Dinner" before a final push toward the November elections.

For years now, politicians, property insurers and other Floridians had openly expressed their relief that the state hadn't been hit by a hurricane in roughly a decade.

No one's relieved anymore.