Florida is pretty much a must-win state. It controls 29 of those all-important Electoral College votes, which can make or break a presidential candidate. That is why people keep such a close eye on the polls coming out of the state.
In new poll-after-poll across the nation, former Vice President Joe Biden has left Donald Trump in the dust. So when the St. Pete Polls came out, people sat up and paid attention. It showed Biden with 50 percent of Florida’s voters. Only 44 percent would vote for Trump, giving his opponent a full six-point lead. The new Quinnipiac University Poll showed Biden ahead by 13 points in Florida.
An additional two percent of the voters would go for a third-party candidate, and three percent were still undecided. Typically, the percentage of undecided voters is dramatically higher.
St. Pete Poll conducted its poll for Florida Politics and AARP Florida on July 13 and on July 14. The pollsters showed just a 1.8 +/- percentage point margin of error. That provided Biden a solid six percent lead and meant bad news for the incumbent.
After all, the president changed his home address from New York to Florida after a disagreement between him and the New York government. In May, Biden was nearly tied with Trump in the president’s new home state. He only held a one percentage point lead, which was well within the margin of error.
Perhaps, one of the most important issues impacting the voters was the dramatic spike in coronavirus cases. Florida voters saw both the president and their Republican leaders in the national news mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic. They did not come out well in the polling.
Governor Rick DeSantis tried to convince people that the real problem with the dreadful statistics was that the medical personnel were misfiling the causes of death, throwing all of them into the coronavirus barrel. That is not the case.
DeSantis may have heard that the COVID-19 causes blood clots that not only scarred the lungs’ tissue, but also lodged in the heart, the brain, and other organs. As of this writing, 379,611 Floridians have confirmed cases of the virus, according to Google News statistics. Those numbers also included 5,344 deaths.
Biden has been picking up swing votes. He took 53 percent of Florida’s Independent votes. A paltry 39 percent went for the sitting president. Compare that to the May numbers. Biden led with 47 percent of Independent voters, but just barely. Trump had 44 percent. That was a sharp five-point loss.
Democrats voted for Biden 81 percent of the time. Only 15 percent of Democrats would vote for Trump if the election was held today. Conversely, just 78 percent of Republicans would throw in behind Trump. Biden would take 18 percent of the Florida Republicans.
What that meant was that the coronavirus pandemic has cut into Trump’s formerly ironclad base. In May, both men had 81 percent, In the latest poll, Trump’s dropped three points in his own party.
When it came to white voters, Trump took 54 percent, Biden 41 percent. Yet, when it came to other Black voters, Biden won 87 percent.
The president did well with voters 70-year-old and up voter category, 51 percent to 44 for Biden.
The St. Pete Polls interviewed a random sampling of 3,018Â likely voters living within the state. It has a good 1.8 +/- percentage point margin of error. The pollsters used an automated “phone call polling systems” and collected information regarding: “political party, race, age, gender, and media market.”
Source: FloridaPolitics.com.
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