Fresh Take Florida
This year’s political polls in Florida accurately predicted President-elect Donald Trump winning the White House but by tighter margins than he actually did. For other races here, polls were less reliable, including some incorrectly predicting passage of amendments for recreational marijuana and abortion rights.
This year marked at least the third consecutive Presidential Election when polls underestimated the strength of Republican candidates, including Trump.
The postmortem analysis of this year’s pre-election polling reflects the challenges of calculating public opinion, experts said. They underestimated Republican voter turnout in Florida. Democratic voters remained more willing to participate in polls, possibly skewing results. Polls that are taken weeks or months before Election Day fail to capture the sentiments of late-deciders.
Opinion polls are influential. They can help politicians understand what the public wants, and dictate strategies on political spending and messaging. Publicized results can also influence perceptions about which candidates or issues might win on Election Day, affecting turnout.
This election’s polls in Florida included some good, bad and ugly:
— Nearly all the mainstream polls projected Trump easily winning Florida over Vice President Kamala Harris, by an average of 8 percentage points. He actually won by just over 13 percentage points. The poll in mid-October by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, New York, which surveyed 1,510 Florida adults, showed Trump ahead by just 4 percentage points, with a 3.6-percentage-point margin of error. It still showed Trump winning, but it far overstated support for Harris among Democrats.
— The polls were much worse predicting how tight the race would be for Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott over Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) polling lab in late October showed Scott winning 50% to 46% with a 3.2-percentage-point margin of error. Marist’s poll in October was even closer, projecting Scott winning 50% to 48%, with a 3.6-percentage-point margin of error. Scott actually won by nearly 13 points.
— FAU’s polling lab in late October showed Harris slightly ahead of Trump nationally. Trump actually won both the electoral vote 312-226 and the popular vote by about 2.3 million votes. Its polling also showed Florida’s recreational marijuana amendment with barely enough support to pass (it didn’t). The University of North Florida’s opinion lab in late October also showed Florida’s abortion rights amendment with enough support to pass (it also failed).
Michael Binder, faculty director of the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida, said this year’s polls slightly underestimated Republican turnout in Florida — a challenging problem in every election cycle. That tilted the outcome of some polls, he said.
“It looks bad when all the directionality is the same, but that’s something that we struggle with,” he said.
Political polls in 2020 were especially bad, with the highest errors in 40 years for the national popular vote and the highest in at least 20 years for state-level estimates of the vote in presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial races. Experts blamed Republicans’ apparent unwillingness to participate in polls, likely following Trump’s lead when he said polls were fake and intended to suppress votes.
The last time the country’s top polling scientists studied the issue in detail, they couldn’t identify any obvious answers about why polls were so bad: “Conclusive statements are impossible,” the American Association for Public Opinion Research wrote in its November 2022 report. The same group said it will review 2024 political polls at its next national conference in May in St. Louis.
Kevin Wagner, co-executive director of FAU’s Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab, said polls showed overperformance by Democratic Senators across states, including Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. By Election Day, polls seemed to show congressional and Senate races looking more like the presidential race.
“The expectation is there would be less ticket splitting. But I mean, there still was more than you would normally expect, because you had Democratic Senate candidates winning in states that Donald Trump won,” Wagner said.
He said the poll’s failure to predict the margin of Scott’s victory in Florida was especially worrying.
“That’s one we’re going to have to study a little bit more and understand why Senator Scott numbers were not more representative of where he ended up,” he said. “Some of that may have been late deciders, some of that may have been just the nature of how these samples broke down.”
The polling experts said the Florida polls might have missed the mark on the state’s controversial amendments to legalize recreational marijuana and enshrine abortion rights because organized opposition to those measures — in each case led by popular Gov. Ron DeSantis — didn’t heat up until closer to Election Day. The DeSantis administration employed state resources to fight both efforts.
“We did pretty well,” Binder said. “If we had waited two weeks and polled, you know, a couple days before the election, I think we would have done much better on (amendments) three and four,” he said.
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This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at [email protected]. You can donate to support our students here.
18 comments
The Cat In The MAGA Hat
December 12, 2024 at 6:00 pm
Google Trump Regrets Votes
Hung Wiil
December 12, 2024 at 7:02 pm
Google dipshit douche bag.
The Cat In The MAGA Hat
December 12, 2024 at 8:10 pm
You sucked your mother douche as a baby
Jinbeau hidson
December 12, 2024 at 6:20 pm
Trump…I want you to pay my tariffs
China,,, when where and how fast.
Trump. ..Now
China.. hold your breath and breath when it arrives.
Jinbeau hidson
December 12, 2024 at 7:44 pm
He just got 5 billions from is truth social
The Cat In The MAGA Hat
December 12, 2024 at 8:09 pm
Confront White Spiteful Devil like Trump, when you are dealing with insecure White people,this is what triggers their insecure inferiority and they have a lots of them to the point,they do.not know how to challenge you,you can beastmode them through the court,lots of them have no money to defend themselves,they will generally do what the courts say they have to satisfy and lots of Judges generally do not tolerate their being ignorant and will use Judicial sanction to.bring back in reality
RICK WHITTAKER [FKA YewOweMe]
December 14, 2024 at 1:54 pm
Hush Cat ….. us Adults are speaking.
Rick
The Earl Pitts American Fan Club
December 12, 2024 at 8:36 pm
Good Eve ‘Ting America,
The “Dook 4 Brains Left thought it would influnce our citizens by manipulating the polls to make it appear that a majority of Americans were going to vote for Scrumpy Rumpy Kamalla.
Dident happen.
Thank you America,
Earl Pitts American “Official Spoksman” for The Earl Pitts American Fan Club
Rick Whitaker
December 12, 2024 at 8:43 pm
As always Earl,
You came thru with some Top Notch Sage Wisdom my man.
Thanks Earl
Earl’s Biggest Fan-Boy, Rick Whitaker [EARL’S BIGGEST FAN BOY]
Ron Ogden
December 13, 2024 at 6:53 am
Lots of excuses, not much real comprehension. It is a mistake to try to use science to understand the basically emotional process of choosing a leader. That has been the failure of the left from the very beginning, to rely on Marx to understand St. George.
Jinbeau hidson
December 13, 2024 at 9:05 am
Let’s remember Lincoln said he would not interfere with the south..and guess what the proclamation and insurrection
Rick Whitaker
December 13, 2024 at 9:06 am
Thanks for your kind words to Earl, Ron,
But just so we see eye to eye, mano y mano, patriot to patriot:
Ron, the position of Earl’s Biggest Fan Boy is ALREADY TAKEN !!!
We will consider your application as Earl’s Second Biggest Fan Boy and get back to you at a later time.
Thanks again, Ron
Rick Whitaker [Earl’s Biggest Fan Boy]
It's Complicated
December 13, 2024 at 2:06 pm
It’s a very practical problem pollsters have, and people like me are the problem. Family of four super voters, no land lines, four cell phones, none of us answer a call from an unknown caller (and if we did answer it by mistake, we’d hang up as soon as we realized it is a poll). We are not unique. A family of super voters who have essentially self-selected ourselves out of all polls. Wrecks havoc upon weighting responses.
Frank
December 16, 2024 at 9:18 am
When the dems consistently nominate the Nikki Frieds of the world as their candidate, for any office, what do you expect from a media that gushes all over them and the clueless public who watches said media?
SuzyQ
December 17, 2024 at 10:56 pm
The polls were not accurate two (2) years ago for Florida’s gubernatorial election. Most polls had Govenor DeSantis winning by 5-6 percentage points. One Republican poll had DeSantis winning by 7-8 percentage points while one Democratic poll had DeSantis winning by 1-2 points. They were all wrong. Governor DeSantis won re-election in the greatest landslide in the history of modern Florida politics by nearly 20 percentage points, all without Trump’s endorsement and Trump publicly bashing him in the weeks and days leading up to Governor DeSantis’ re-election.
Jesse
December 19, 2024 at 5:02 pm
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EARL PITTS "SAGE PATRIOT" AMERICAN
December 19, 2024 at 6:51 pm
Good evening Sage Patriots & Dook 4 Brains Leftys,
Its just so gratifying to watch these “Propped Up” “Heros” of the Harris/Biden “Dookministration” fall from grace as “The @ss Clowns” that they have been all along.
As a “Sage Patriot” it makes me “Relax My Political Sphincter” and rejoice that I never was a “Dook 4 Brains Lefty”.
Thank you, Sage Patriots & Dook 4 Brains Leftys,
EARL PITTS “SAGE PATRIOT” AMERICAN
My Take
December 21, 2024 at 2:36 pm
Many who will vote for a lout will not admit it.
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