Progressives just scored a truly shocking victory in last night's Florida primary election, as state lawmaker Angie Nixon defeated Alex Vindman in the Democratic nomination race for a Senate seat, by a whopping 12 points. The biggest takeaway from this race was that Vindman had raised 16 times the amount of money that Nixon did, but in the end it just didn't matter. The other big takeaway from the race is that Nixon's victory was an impressive one for a progressive because she won demographic groups that don't normally go for progressive candidates -- they are usually a stronghold of votes for establishment candidates instead.

The news wasn't universally good for Florida progressives last night, it bears mentioning. Establishment Democrats won in nomination races for governor and in several House districts (that had been recently gerrymandered by Republicans). But the upset victory in the Senate race was so stunning that it is the one most prominent in the headlines today.

One especially stunning fact in Nixon's surprise win: she didn't even run a single television ad. The disparity in advertising spending was rather remarkable, in fact:

Money is usually key to political campaigns in Florida, the nation's third-largest state and home to 10 television markets. Ms. [Angie] Nixon raised only $975,000, compared to Mr. [Alex] Vindman's more than $16.3 million. And she spent just $60,000 on advertising, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm, compared to his $2.2 million.

Mr. Vindman will face questions about why his campaign did not spend more introducing him to voters. But credit Ms. Nixon, a union organizer, for knowing how to harness the enthusiasm of grass-roots Democrats and volunteers -- and deftly using social media -- to inform them about her candidacy.

To put that another way, Nixon spent less than three percent of what Vindman did on advertising. And she won by twelve points. Vindman, who rose to prominence during Donald Trump's first impeachment, did spend money on ads, but apparently the focus of his ads wasn't even on the primary race:

Steve Schale, a longtime Democratic strategist in Florida, said that while [Alex] Vindman raised millions, most of his spending was focused on preparing for the general election and not communicating with primary voters. Some Democrats said Vindman's primary strategy made him look arrogant, a view that was especially damaging because the candidate moved to Florida only a few years earlier.

Nixon's upset win also upset the apple cart of pundits trying to fit all progressive victories (in multiple very different states) into one convenient ideological storyline. At first this storyline was that progressives (especially democratic socialists) could only win in heavily-Democratic urban areas. Zohran Mamdani won in the New York City mayor's race, but the pundits assured everyone that this was precisely because it was New York City -- such victories just couldn't happen elsewhere. Then a few progressives won races in places like Colorado, so they changed it slightly to "progressives can only win in heavily-Democratic areas" in general. Then two prominent progressives won the Democratic nominations for Senate races in Michigan and Minnesota, which meant that they could indeed win (at least at the primary level) in Midwestern states. The pundits did notice that, but they took comfort in the fact that the polling in Michigan was significantly off and the progressive candidate only won by a razor-thin margin (rather than by the blowout the polls predicted). They also patted themselves on the back when a progressive candidate lost a governor's primary race in Wisconsin, again by a very thin margin. The Minnesota race happened on the same day as the Wisconsin race, where the progressive outperformed the polling by a significant margin, but the pundits all agreed among themselves to just flat-out ignore this race.

Last night proved that a Democratic Socialist (who had only recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America) can win a primary in the South -- which wasn't supposed to be possible, according to the pundits. Again, this is only a primary election victory, but even so, it did further damage to the punditocracy's storyline about where progressives would even have a chance of winning.

The breakdown of voters and counties further blew up the conventional punditry wisdom of where and how progressive could win:

That boost, combined with [Alex] Vindman largely ignoring his primary challenge to focus on the general election, allowed [Angie] Nixon to assemble a winning coalition that looked quite different from those backing progressive statewide candidates in other states, including Michigan and Wisconsin. There, the progressive candidates typically did best in more college-educated and younger areas, and sometimes floundered in lower-income counties and those with more Black residents.

That was not the case in Florida. Nixon, who is Black, won by 30 points in Florida's counties with the most Black residents, as well as its least-college-educated counties.

This article helpfully provides graphs, showing Nixon winning the counties with the highest percentages of both college-educated voters and Black residents. In counties with under 20 percent college-educated voters, Nixon won 65 percent to Vindman's 35 percent. In counties with over 30 percent Black voters, the percentages were exactly the same, 65-35. Less surprising was Nixon's overwhelming advantage with younger voters, where she also beat Vindman in the highest-percentage younger-voter counties by the same 65-35 split. Also less surprising was that Nixon won in urban core counties by 63 percent to 37 percent, but the surprising part of this breakdown was that she also beat Vindman in suburban counties -- 53 percent to 47 percent -- where progressives have also struggled in other states. Astonishingly, Nixon even beat Vindman in Broward County, which is Vindman's home county. That's pretty impressive right there, you've got to admit.

Obviously, the conventional-wisdom storyline needs to change. Whether the pundits actually do change it or not is an open question (since they tend to just completely ignore data that doesn't back their sweeping conclusions).

There is, of course, one huge caveat to Nixon's upset victory. She probably doesn't have much of a chance in November's general election. Florida has gotten so red that winning a statewide election for a Senate seat is probably beyond any Democrat's reach right now. The establishment wing of the party was hopeful that Vindman -- who became nationally-prominent during Trump's first impeachment -- could possibly be competitive. But now Nixon is seen as a lot less competitive, so it's highly doubtful the national party is going to invest much in this race.

Of course, it might not matter. Nixon didn't spend a dime on television ads -- in a state with 10 separate television markets -- and yet she still pulled off a stunning double-digit victory. She obviously knows how to run her campaign using different media and a different strategy. So perhaps there is a possibility that she could shock the political universe by coming out on top in November. But at this point, that's got to be seen as a longshot -- nobody is moving Florida into the "battleground state" category for Senate races quite yet.

Still, Nixon's victory is still not only impressive but it is also remarkable in the way it flipped the conventional wisdom of the appeal of progressive candidates to certain types of voter. If nothing else, it will prove that dismissing certain races as: "Well, obviously a progressive can't win here" isn't always the smart call to make. Which will give hope to other progressives running elsewhere in the future, at the very least.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant