UNF poll of Florida voters shows double digit Trump lead over Harris

U.S. Senate Race

Respondents were also asked who they would vote for if the election for U.S. Senator from Florida were held today. Forty-nine percent indicated Republican incumbent Rick Scott, and 46 percent expressed support for Democrat Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the poll states. One percent of respondents said they would vote for someone else, and 4 percent were undecided.

“At just three percentage points, Rick Scott’s lead is significantly narrower than Trump’s, similar to what we saw back in July,” UNF Public Opinion Research Lab Director Michael Binder stated in the news release. “Much like the rest of the country, Trump is running notably ahead of senate candidates in the same state.”

Read: County-By-County | Florida Early Voting Guide, where, when to vote

Ballot questions

Respondents were also asked how they’d vote on three of the six proposed Florida constitutional amendments on the 2024 ballot. When asked whether they would vote yes or no on Amendment 1, titled “Partisan Election of Members of District School Boards,” 41 percent said they would vote “yes,” while 30 percent said “no,” and another 30 percent said they did not know.

Amendment 3, “Adult Personal Use of Marijuana,” received much greater and definitive support with 66 percent indicating a vote of “yes,” 32 percent who said they would vote “no,” and 8 percent who said they don’t know.

“After years of polling on marijuana in Florida, both medical and recreational, it is clear that the majority is in favor of legalization,” Binder stated. “Closing in on election day, despite some heavy campaigning, we’re seeing support for this amendment and is on track to exceed the 60 percent supermajority required to pass.”

Amendment 4, “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” just reached the threshold for a supermajority, with 60 percent indicting a vote of “yes,” and 32 percent who said “no.” Eight percent of respondents said they did not know.

“Since campaigning has picked up against the amendment, support for abortion protection has dropped from 69 percent of likely voters back in July,” Binder stated. “Now, just barely reaching the 60 percent it needs to pass, it looks like the fate of abortion in Florida will come down to turnout on Election Day.”

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Methodology The UNF PORL Florida Statewide Poll consists of a random sample of 977 likely Florida voters, and was conducted from October 7 through October 18, 2024, by the Public Opinion Research Lab (PORL) at the University of North Florida. The sampling frame, consisting of landline and cell phone numbers, was sourced from the September 2024 Florida voter file. A voter was included in the sampling frame if they had voted in any of the 2016, 2018, 2020, or 2022 general elections, or the 2020, 2022, or 2024 primary elections. A proportional number of new registrants were also included in the sampling frame. Respondents who said they would “probably” or “definitely” not vote in the upcoming election, or refused to answer, were screened out. To ensure a representative sample, the 10 Florida designated media market areas (DMAs) were stratified into 18 different strata, according geography and urbanicity. The final sample consists of completed and partially completed surveys, as well as 31 respondents who volunteered their vote choice before hanging up the phone. For cases in which a respondent dropped off between presidential vote choice and senate vote choice, the respondent’s vote choice for senate was imputed based on the probability that a respondent who indicates a vote for Trump will also indicate a vote for Scott (85%), or that a respondent who indicates a vote for Harris will also indicate a vote for Mucarsel-Powell (90%). Respondents were contacted by live callers via telephone between 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, with up to 5 callbacks attempted. Data collection took place at the PORL facility with its 27-station Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) system. A single interviewer, through hand dialing, asked for the listed respondent by name. If they reached the wrong respondent, or the respondent was not available, the interview was terminated. The response rate of this study was 4.6%, using the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Response Rate 3 (RR3) calculation. The weighting process had two steps: All data were weighted by educational attainment, partisan registration, age, race and ethnicity, sex, and geographic strata to match the population of likely voters in Florida. Then, the base weight was multiplied by the probability of turnout, based on respondents’ selfreported likelihood to vote. Geography, partisan registration, sex, race and ethnicity, and age weights were created from the Florida Voter File. Education weights were calculated using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 2023 5-year estimates for individuals 25 and over. Vote probability was calculated using survey and voter turnout data from the 2020 general election. All weighted demographic variables were applied using the SPSS version 27 rake weighting function and are assigned a weight if one of the demographics being weighted on is missing. The margin of sampling error for the vote choice questions is +/- 3.49 percentage points, including estimated design effect due to weighting, with the remaining questions at +/- 3.78. It is important to note that estimates for smaller subpopulations will have larger margins of error, indicating greater uncertainty in the data.

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