Florida law puts the nominees of the party that last won the governorship on the top line on the ballot. On August 15, 2018, the Democratic Party had filed a lawsuit to overturn this law. Presumably if the lawsuit wins, some random procedure would be used to determine ballot order of candidates. But on August 15, 2018, the Democratic Party asked the court to hold the lawsuit in abeyance until November 30, 2018. Presumably the Democratic Party expected to win the Florida gubernatorial election this year, and in that case would not have pursued the lawsuit.

However, the Republican Party won the Florida gubernatorial election of November 2018. Presumably the case will now be revived. The Democratic Party hasn’t elected a Governor of Florida since 1994.

The 2018 margin was only about 50,000 votes. Research on the advantage of listing candidates first suggests that if the Democrats had been listed first, the winner might have been different. Here is a link to the preliminary returns.