TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) – New polling indicates Florida will have several competitive races in next month’s election, including for governor and state property taxes.
A pollster from the University of North Florida (UNF) said polls are far more accurate in elections that don’t involve the president, and they’ve tried to come up with new ways to get a representative sample.
A poll released this week from UNF showed Rep. Byron Donalds leading his opponent David Jolly by just two percentage points, a pretty shocking number considering Republicans hold a huge registration lead.
But that doesn’t mean that Florida is suddenly a purple state. Dr. Sean Freeder, an associate professor of political science at UNF, said that it’s still too close to call.
“So really when you see a margin of error of 2.8, Donalds up by two, you call that too close to call,” Freeder said. “And so truly a dead heat where we can’t really distinguish between a Donalds plus one or a Jolly plus one very easily.”
Now, prediction markets are far more confident. Kalshi currently gives Donalds more than a 70% chance to win.
“When you assess this over millions of markets and lots of different permutations across different categories, you find that that is really true, that we do have a very good, quite reliable forecast of what’s going to happen in the future,” Kalshi Head of Research Nicole Kagan said.
For Amendment 3, the UNF poll said only about 50% of people support that kind of property tax reform, and it needs 60% to pass.
“So about two-thirds of those undecideds would have to flip to yes to make that happen,” Freeder said. “So that’s another one that I’d say is probably too close to call at the moment.”
Finally, the UNF poll also shows Sen. Ashley Moody leading State Rep. Angie Nixon by four points.
The UNF research is just one poll.
Others have Donalds up by as many as eight points. On the prediction market side of things, the odds are greater than 70% that Donalds will win.
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‘Too close to call’: New poll shows tight Florida governor race ahead of general election – WCTV
