Poll: Rick Scott leads Debbie Mucarsel-Powell by 7 points, winning with Hispanic voters

Republican Rick Scott is on track to keep his U.S. Senate seat Nov. 5, according to newly released polling that shows him leading by 7 percentage points statewide.

Pollsters found Scott is also ahead with Hispanic voters even though his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, is of Latin American heritage and he is not.

Jacksonville-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy interviewed 625 likely voters by phone Oct. 1-4 on behalf of NBC 6 and Telemundo 51 in Miramar. The firm randomly selected whom it called from a phone-matched Florida voter registry and assigned quotas to voter turnout by county.

Statewide, Scott leads Mucarsel-Powell 48%-41%, with 11% of voters undecided or planning to cast ballots for another candidate. Only in Southeast Florida are voters siding more with the Democrat (53%-36%). Her next best region, pollingwise, is the Tampa Bay area, where 42% of voters prefer her compared to 46% who like Scott better.

Scott leads by 20 points with White voters, while Mucarsel-Powell is ahead by 70 points with Black voters. Among Hispanic voters in Florida, who generally lean conservative, Scott holds a 6-point lead (47%-41%) after blanketing Spanish-language broadcasts with ads in which he denounces “radical socialist” educators and “the evils of communism.”

Polling by TelavisaUnivision and Media Predict from a month ago, compared with Mason-Dixon’s new figures, indicates Mucarsel-Powell may be losing ground with Hispanics. The earlier poll showed the two were in a dead heat, with 29% support apiece among Florida’s Hispanic voters.

Scott leads by 20 points with men (55%-25%), Mason-Dixon found. Mucarsel-Powell holds a much more modest advantage with women (48%-41%).

Similar to the findings of a recent New York Times survey, Mason-Dixon found voters of all age groups prefer the incumbent over his opponent. Mucarsel-Powell is performing best with voters 65 and older, but still trails Scott by 6 points.

Meanwhile, an even share of Democrats and Republicans (4%) plan to cross the aisle and vote for the candidate of the opposing party. Among independents, 43% are committed to voting for Scott compared to 38% who said the same about Mucarsel-Powell.

Sixteen percent remain undecided, while 3% are voting for someone else.

The poll had a 4-percentage-point margin of error and 95% accuracy. Subgroups, such as gender or age, had higher margins of error.

The new Mason-Dixon numbers follow other polls showing Scott as the odds-on favorite to win the U.S. Senate race next month. They included recent Marist Poll and Independent Center surveys that found Scott up by 2 points, the aforementioned New York Times poll showing Scott ahead by 9 points and a Victory Insights query that tracked Scott as holding a less-than-1-point edge in the race.