Talk Elections

538 is reporting these numbers from the University of North Florida, but I can't find the actual data on their site.

Florida: UNF (https://www.unf.edu/coas/porl/Recent_Polls.aspx), Oct. 14-20, 646 RV

Biden 48, Trump 43
Warren 46, Trump 43
Trump 43, Buttigieg 42
Trump 44, Harris 41

Biden 49, Pence 38
Warren 46, Pence 40

Lean D, FL is gonna vote for the Democratic nominee

Trump only getting 42-44% of the vote should concern him. Especially because the party split of this poll skews slightly GOP.

Clearly Safe R. /s

I'm very cautious with FL polls and will be right to the end of the race. In 2018, the polls were way too Dem friendly. Tossup or tilt R for now, even with Biden.

Well, I hope for democrats that this poll is more accurate than the one of October 2018 (the one which had Gillum leading by 6)

What a bunch of geniuses : ''Gillum is clearly leading in the gubernatorial race" said Dr. Michael Binder, faculty director of the Public Opinion Research Lab at UNF.

UNF has an A- rating from 538.  Every pollster gets some results wrong occasionally.  The way you keep bringing up such misses is getting repetitive and tiresome.  Give it a rest; you've made the point.

You have to put things in perspective.

And no ; when a pollster consistently overestimates the candidates of one political party, it's not a ''occasional miss''

The Latino community is mostly Puerto Rican and Cuban, whom arent always reliably Democratic, like Mexicans in SW. Latinos may tip the scale towards Biden; as a result of Porto Rico statehood being fully considered now. Also, Trump outperformed expectations in FL, in 2016, Marco Rubio was on the ballot, which gave Trump a 2% bump, margin of difference in the state.

What your doing is dismissing polls you dont like. Alot of pollsters missed Florida last year, doesnt mean we should discount them because of that.

You cited one miss from UNF, in a race that many pollsters got wrong.

Florida is at least Likely R. After 2018, I don't see the Dems winning it.

If the election was held today Trump would lose Florida (and MI/WI/PA and AZ, and maybe even NC and IA). It doesn't mean that will be the case next November, but that's the state of the race at this point.

Fixed the thread title (Harris is -3, not -1).

Okay, let's take a look :

FL-SEN 2018 :
March 2017 poll : Nelson +6
October 2017 poll : Nelson +1
February 2018 poll : Nelson +6
September 2018 poll : Tied
October 2018 : Nelson +1
Average : Nelson +2.8

FL-GOV 2018 :
September 2018 poll : Gillum +4
October 2018 poll : Gillum +6
Average : Gillum +5


FL-PRES 2016 :
Early October 2016 poll : Clinton +7
Late October 2016 poll : Clinton +2
Average : Clinton +4.5

See a pattern ?

Not to be rude, but its dumb to average an entire poll cycle and compare it to the final results. The only race they really failed in was the Governor race in 2018.

Their final presidential poll and Senate poll results were both within the MoE.

Bardley Effect? People lie to pollsters down there? Old people are notoriously easy to poll. The only thing I see going on is that Democrats stay home in Florida.

You can trust that if Biden/Warren win Florida (which, despite Atlas' insistence, can easily happen), it's not going to be by that wide of a margin. Florida will be decided by less than 2 points either way.

The point is that every poll done by the UNF for these three major races had the democratic candidate leading by varying margins, even if in the end democrats lost every race listed above.
UMF is consistently overestimating democratic candidates, that’s the point I wanted to make

Trump can run away with it if he hit his ceiling. Just like how W got within maybe 2% of his ceiling in 2004.

Safe R. FL polls always way oversample dems. Trump is probably up 1-3 on Biden 4-7 on Warren, Pete

Nobody is winning Florida by 7% unless Trump totally implodes and gets a landslide victory against him or his memory.

Bad samples can occur, but you're suggesting 7 points worth.  Not impossible, but it's a lot.

In my opinion the polls in FL were so bad in the 2018 you have to assume unless Dems are up 5-8 pts in polls that Trump is ahead.

FL isnt a tipping pt state, Wiz is, but its still a purple Sunbelt state, with Latinos who want PR statehood.

Wait, what?  Why on earth were Buttigieg and Harris polled and not Sanders?

Pure tossup until election day with Biden, tilt or lean Republican with anyone else. However, I don't trust Florida polling that much any longer, especially after Gillum and Nelson were supposed to win.

You’re too optimistic, I think. But yeah, Trump would probably defeat Biden by 2 and Warren by 4.

Certainly possible, but why would you assume Biden will do worse than Clinton in Florida?  Trump's margin over her was 1.2%.

Well, there are at least 5 reasons

1. Cuban Americans have warmed up to Trump, it should help him in the Miami area and to some extent in the Tampa area. Thus I can see Trump winning 35/36% in Miami DADE county, which would be a small improvement compared to 2016.

2. Palm Beach is slowly becoming more R friendly, it’s pretty uncommon to see a such large county trending to the right. It should help Trump to offset the potential loss of Duval/Seminole

3. The D registration advantage is shrinking fast. In 2012 Dems had a 540k voting registration advantage, it’s now barely above 240k. It’s not a good trend for them, especially when you consider that democrats have usually some problems in order to turnout out their voters.

4. Many former swing counties are becoming very hostile to democrats. Pasco is the best example. It was once very swingy, Obama did very well here in 2008 and Nelson won it by a big margin in 2012 and even in 2014 Charlie Christ remained competitive, but since then things have gone from bad to worse for dems, next year Trump could come very close to winning 60% here.

5. The large influx of retirees remains a big problem for dems as these voters are reliable voters.

More tax payers paying into Social security will be beneficial to GDP if PR is added as a state. Trump won FL in 2016, due to Rubio dropping out of Prez race and running for Senate. Same with Portman and Toomey and Johnson; as a result, Trump is the underdog.

Only the Buttigieg number looks accurate. Though it's a bit friendly to Trump, I'll give it a pass since they're not using decimals.

I get why people can think a poll is generally off in one direction or another.  But how can you reasonably think that the same poll is off for every candidate except one? 

Florida is usually a bit more R than the US as a whole, but it tends to go with the winner. 

It was a joke.

FL isn’t Lean/Likely R, nor is it guaranteed to vote for Trump in a close race, nor is it less likely to flip than NC and IA.

Casually excluding Bernie Sanders while including 4th and 5th place candidates

Too positive for the Democrats, i think it's a +5 bias towards the Democratic Party, but with Buttigieg / Harris being closer if they end up being the nominee, as more people are undecided. Biden might win it narrowly, but I think Trump wins against all the other candidates in Florida.