Poll gives Andrew Gillum 6-point lead over Ron DeSantis

desantis gillum

The latest poll from the University of North Florida’s public opinion outfit has Democrat Andrew Gillum six points ahead of Republican Ron DeSantis in the race for Florida governor. 

The six-point lead is outside of the poll’s 3 percentage point margin of error.

Released Tuesday from the Public Opinion Research Lab at UNF, the survey has 49 percent of likely voters backing the Tallahassee Mayor and 43 percent opting for DeSantis, the former Congressman from Ponte Vedra Beach. 

About 7 percent of the sample is undecided.

With Gillum at an advantage, the results mirror most public polls released since the Aug. 28 primary. RealClearPolitics, which aggregates the results of reputable polls, puts Gillum ahead on average by 3 points.

“Almost 3 million people have already voted, and Gillum is clearly leading in the gubernatorial race,” said Dr. Michael Binder, faculty director of UNF’s polling branch. 

The edge for Gillum stems from non-party affiliates. Of the 194 NPAs sampled — roughly 18 percent of the 1,047 sample size — 56 percent broke for Gillum, while 31 percent went for DeSantis, and 13 percent indicated they were undecided. 

Partisans, for the most part, supported their party-backed candidate.

Of the 422 Democratic voters sampled, 87 percent said they’d vote for Gillum, with 7 percent splitting for DeSantis and 6 percent undecided. Eighty-four percent of the 431 likely GOP voters said they’d cast a ballot for DeSantis, with 10 percent breaking for Gillum and 7 percent undecided. 

These splits highlight the need for emphasis on sampling the right amount of NPA voters in surveys leading up to the Nov. 6 election, Binder added.

“Currently less than 18 percent of ballots cast have been by NPA/Others, we estimate that number will be 19 percent,” said Binder. 

In September, the same UNF polling group had Gillum up 47-43, with 10 percent undecided.

Danny McAuliffe

Danny is a contributor at floridapolitics.com. He is a graduate of Fordham Law School and Florida State University, where he served as the editor of the FSView & Florida Flambeau. Reach him at [email protected].


5 comments

  • Seber Newsome III

    October 30, 2018 at 7:18 am

    The university of north florida polls are always very heavily biased. I do not trust or believe their polls. This election will bring out the fallacy in their polls and no one will ever trust or believe them again. DeSantis will win and their polls will look utterly unbelievable in the future.

    • James

      October 30, 2018 at 7:31 am

      DeSantis could only win if Florida had Voter Suppression, such as in Georgia .
      Looks like Desantis is out of Luck !

      • Nordonia Nate

        October 30, 2018 at 6:13 pm

        What’s sad … People like you ALWAYS got to find that excuse for failing. All you truly have to do … look in the mirror.

    • Phil Morton

      October 30, 2018 at 9:57 am

      Poll yesterday had Gillum up 5. That one was probably “heavily biased” as well, right.

      • Nordonia Nate

        October 30, 2018 at 6:11 pm

        Phil…

        Consider the day before the national election the polls still had Clinton favored.. Look at the poll demographics and methodology..

        You probably had your hopes up in 2016 too.

Comments are closed.


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