Marco Rubio, Val Demings to debate Tuesday night in high-stakes Senate race in Florida

Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Val Demings will face off in a high-stakes debate Tuesday night as one of the country's marquee U.S. Senate contests heads into the final weeks of the 2022 midterm election.

ABC affiliate WPBF 25 News will host and televise the one-hour encounter that starts at 7 p.m. from Palm Beach State College’s Lake Worth Beach campus. The station's news anchor, Todd McDermott, will moderate the debate while The Palm Beach Post Executive Editor Rick Christie and Florida Trend Executive Editor Vicki Chachere will pose questions to the candidates.

Rubio, a Cuban-American from West Miami, is seeking his third term in the U.S. Senate. Demings, a former Orlando police chief, has served in the U.S. House since 2017.

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The contest speaks to Florida's diverse population as Demings, a Black woman, and Rubio, a Hispanic male, will top the statewide ballot.

Will Florida race impact national contest for control of U.S. Senate?

The Florida race could be critical to determining which party ends up in control of the U.S. Senate — currently, it's a 50-50 deadlock.

Democrats have a governing majority because the chamber's rules call for the vice president to cast a tie-breaking vote, and so Vice President Kamala Harris gives Democrats the necessary edge.

The political analysis website FiveThirtyEight presently gives Democrats a "two-in-three chance" of keeping the majority in the chamber.

FiveThirtyEight said Republicans have an opportunity, however, to pick up seats in Nevada and Georgia, while Democrats are "on firmer footing" in Arizona, and could win a tight contest in Pennsylvania as well.

Flipping Florida's seat to Demings would be a monumental win for Democrats, while securing Rubio's seat is critical to GOP hopes to recapture control of the Senate they relinquished in January 2021 in losing both of neighboring Georgia's seats.

Winning both his race and GOP majority would mean Rubio could return to his chairman's post on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

A poll on the Rubio-Demings matchup from Mason Dixon released early this month suggested incumbent Rubio enjoys a comfortable 6 percentage point lead, 47%-41%. But analysts and pundits have pointed out the fact that Rubio has not polled above 50% as a sign there is an opportunity for Demings.

Ahead of Tuesday's debate, both Rubio and Demings each held events on their home turf.

Rubio held a roundtable on Friday with leaders of the Cuban-American community at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in Miami. On Tuesday afternoon, he was in Doral for a get-out-the vote-rally with fellow Republicans Sen. Rick Scott, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, U.S. Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez.

Demings was at a rally in Orlando Saturday with first lady Jill Biden and on Monday was campaigning in The Villages.

The debate will be livestreamed at www.PalmBeachPost.com.

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Senate debate in Florida: How to watch Marco Rubio and Val Demings