Poll: Biden, Trump basically tied
Florida voters favor former VP a bit more
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is tied with President Donald Trump in Florida with less than four weeks until mail voting begins and less than nine weeks until election day
Quinnipiac University Poll released Thursday found 48% of likely Florida voters favoring Biden and 45% for Trump, a difference that is so close that it means the two candidates are effectively tied.
Nationally, Biden is doing better than in Florida.
A nationwide Quinnipiac Poll released Wednesday found Biden leading Trump 52% to 42%. The latest RealClearPolitics national polling average shows Biden leading 50% to 42%.
But Florida is a critical state, and the close race shows why both sides are pouring tens of millions of dollars of advertising money into the state, hoping to pump up their supporters’ enthusiasm, discourage the other party’s voters, and attract the people who say they’re still undecided.
Quinnipiac said 93% of the likely voters in Florida who’ve chosen a candidate say their minds are made up and 5% said they might change their minds.
Florida has a history of exceedingly close races. In 2016, Trump won 49% of the vote statewide to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 47.8%. Florida is the largest state that could go either way in the presidential election, awarding 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
The Quinnipiac survey is the first major poll in Florida since the conclusion of the Democratic and Republican national conventions the last two weeks in
August. Biden has had a long string of positive, but not overwhelmingly decisive, polling signs. Of the 25 Florida polls listed by RealClearPolitics since April 1, Biden has led in 23 — including Thursday’s — and was tied with Trump in two.
Including the Quinnipiac poll, the FiveThir
tyEight average of presidential polls in Florida has Biden 4 points ahead of Trump, 49% to 45%.
Big demographic differences
Florida seniors favor Biden. Among likely voters 65 and older, 54% said they are supporting Biden, compared to 44% for Trump. That’s significant, because it’s the demographic group that’s most likely to turn out and vote.
The youngest voters are also for Biden, who leads Trump 55% to 37% among those age 18 to 34. Democrats and liberal interest groups always focus attention on increasing turnout among younger voters, who generally are the least likely to show up at the polls. The president has more support in the age groups in between.
Among voters age 50 to 64, Trump leads Biden 51% to 43%. Among voters 35 to 49, the candidates are effectively tied, with 47% for Biden and 46% for Trump.
White voters favor Trump, 53% to 44%. Black voters favor Biden, 85% to 8%, and Hispanic voters are evenly split, with 45% for Trump and 43% for Biden.
Trump is an issue
Among Biden voters, 64% said they were doing so mainly because they oppose Trump. Another 22% said it’s mainly because they like Biden.
For Trump voters, 53% said their support was mainly because they like Trump and 28% said it was mainly because they oppose Biden.
Neither of the candidates is loved by Florida voters. But that’s largely because each party likes its own candidate and dislikes the other side’s.
Policy issues
The economy was cited as the top issue by 27% of voters. Another 19% said law and order, 15% said coronavirus and 13% said racial equality. No other issue hit 10%. But issues showed the depth of the partisan divide, with big differences based on party affiliation.
Among Republicans, 42% cited the economy and 35% said law and order was the top issue. Among Democrats, 29% cited the coronavirus and 24% said racial equality. Among independents, 26% picked the economy and 16% picked law and order.
The fine print
The poll is a snapshot, and can’t accurately be compared to previous Quinnipiac Polls. That’s because the latest survey reports what it found among “likely voters.” Early in election cycles, pollsters use “registered voters,” and then switch to likely voters closer to Election Day in an attempt to better focus on people expected to vote.
The new survey of 1,235 likely voters was conducted from Aug. 28 — the day after the end of the Republican convention — through Sept. 1 with live callers to landlines and cellphones. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The sample size for smaller groups, such as Democrats, Republicans and independents, is smaller and the margin of error is higher.
Pollster ratings from FiveThirtyEight.com give Quinnipiac a B plus for its data gathering and accuracy. But some Florida political experts are skeptical of its methodology.
When a Quinnipiac Poll in July showed Biden was 13 points ahead of Trump, Steve Schale tweeted that “Quinnipiac is the Blake Bortles of Florida polling.”
Schale led Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 Florida campaigns, and this year is running a national pro-Biden super political action committee. Bortles is a former Jacksonville Jaguars starting quarterback whose mediocre performance has become a running joke on TV and online.
Anthony Man reached at
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