Floridians are ready to choose Donald Trump for president and Rick Scott in his re-election bid to the Senate, according to a new poll – but in a bit of a mind-bending dichotomy, half of the Republicans surveyed support legalized marijuana and abortion rights.
In a state with nearly 1 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, the former president is up 7 points over Kamala Harris in a two-way race, according to a University of North Florida survey published Tuesday.
Sen. Rick Scott, meanwhile, is up 47% to 43% over Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the poll of 774 likely voters in the Sunshine State.
The key in both races, given the major party candidates have roughly equal support in their own parties: independent voters. Trump is +12 with them, while Scott is +2, a result that Mucarsel-Powell and the embattled Florida Democrats will cling to as a sign of hope.
“What’s really interesting is that Trump has a couple point bigger lead than Rick Scott, who’s only up by 4 – just inside the margin of error of this poll,” commented poll director Dr. Michael Binder.
“Scott has a history of winning razor thin statewide races in Florida, and in a state that has become significantly more red in the past six years, this could be another close race for Scott,” said Binder.
Though in an ironic twist, it appears the same pool of voters are ready to vote against the Republican norm on a couple of hot button issues, with the numbers saying that amendments legalizing cannabis and removing restrictions on abortion imposed in recent years (the current state of play: a six-week ban) are going to pass with the requisite 60% of the vote.
Amendment 3 (“Adult Personal Use of Marijuana”) had 64% support, with 31% opposed, and 5% not answering. If passed, Floridians could hold 3 ounces — or in the words of Gov. Ron DeSantis, “80 joints” — at once.
Amendment 4 (“Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion”) garnered 69% support, with 23% opposed and others in the dark.
These amendments, which have been roundly denounced by every Republican leader in the state who is willing to comment publicly, illustrate a gap between elected officials and their constituents.
50% of GOP voters want to legalize ganja, and 53% want to remove the restrictions on abortion imposed by the supermajority Republican legislature.
And as expected, a majority of independents and Democrats in the state support the amendments.
Weed is at 63% with unaligned voters, and the abortion measure is at 71%. Meanwhile, 79% of Democrats back the pot push, and 87% of them want Tallahassee’s anti-abortion laws rescinded.
Binder notes that caveats apply in the amendment push.
Regarding the marijuana measure, he says it’s “not too clear yet how much money will be injected into the campaign against this amendment,” which has seen heavy rotation of ads in favor of it for weeks on television in the Sunshine State.
And on the abortion vote, Binder warns that final number could be depressed by “the highly contested and contentious financial impact statement recently added to the ballot summary,” which claims more abortions may “negatively affect” revenues and that “uncertainty” reigns about legal costs and “whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds.”
And indeed, all that has to happen to kill these amendments is holding them below 60% — a threshold imposed by Florida legislators.
But as of now, it appears Florida voters may re-elect Republicans to two very important offices, while dispensing with GOP priorities along the way.
