Republican Byron Donalds holds a 7 percentage point advantage over Democrat David Jolly in the race for Florida governor, according to a new NBC South Florida/Telemundo Station Group poll, while Republican Sen. Ashley Moody is up 10 points in her matchup against Democratic challenger Angie Nixon.
Donalds, a congressman from the southwest of the state, is at 48 percent in the poll, to Jolly’s 41 percent, in a race in which Donalds has had a considerable financial advantage. (This advantage is just inside the poll’s margin of error, but Donalds has the edge in most possibilities.)
Moody is at 50% in the Senate race, compared to 40% for Nixon, a candidate aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America who entered the general election after a surprise primary victory over Democrat Alexander Vindman in August.
The results come amid general optimism among Democrats about the 2026 elections, with public polling showing the party turning elections in some typically red states into contests this year. This poll suggests the limits of this apparent momentum elsewhere.
The poll also provided insight into the state’s hugely influential bloc of Hispanic voters, largely concentrated in South Florida. In 2024, Donald Trump won Miami-Dade County, with a large Hispanic population, by about 11 points, a significant upset in a part of the state that had long leaned Democratic. Joe Biden won the county by 7 points in 2020.
But now, Florida’s Hispanic voters — including significant Cuban, Nicaraguan, Honduran and Colombian populations — appear to be moving away from Trump, even as other prominent Republican candidates hold comfortable leads among Hispanic voters.
Donalds holds a 48 to 43 percent lead over Jolly among Hispanic voters, according to the survey, while Moody is up 47 to 40 percent over Nixon. Rating Trump’s job performance is undervalued, however, with 49% disapproving of his job performance compared to 45% approving.
Overall, 48% of all likely Florida voters approve of Trump’s job performance and 48% disapprove.
Before Trump’s gains among Florida’s Hispanic population in 2024, Democrats had generally won the state’s population by comfortable margins. Democrats say recent special election victories in Florida show the party has already begun to win back the Hispanic vote, thanks in part to Trump’s aggressive immigration policies. Dissatisfaction with prices and the cost of living also affected Trump’s popularity among Hispanic voters.
“In the Florida congressional elections, we saw huge swings,” Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told NBC News last week, speaking about the committee’s efforts in Florida’s House races. She said that when it comes to immigration, Trump and his party have failed to keep their promise “to tackle the worst of the worst.”
By far the most important issue identified was inflation and the cost of living, with 30% of respondents saying this was the issue most likely to influence their vote. In both the overall sample and the sample of Hispanic voters, “leadership of the state or country” (17%) was the second most important issue. The broader survey data places “immigration enforcement” as the third most important issue (16%), while the Hispanic sample places property taxes (13%) as the third most important issue. Immigration enforcement was the fourth most important issue among Hispanic voters (12%).
Questions about the Trump administration’s efforts to allow local and state politicians to cooperate with federal immigration agents fell along partisan lines.
Among voters overall, 85% of Republicans support the policy, compared to 18% of Democrats and 44% of those identified as independent voters who supported tougher immigration control tactics.
Property taxes also came to the fore in Florida during the midterms.
The state Republican Party and term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis support a ballot measure, known as Amendment 3, that would increase property tax exemptions to the first $250,000 of a home’s value by 2028. The exemption cap is currently $50,000.
In the poll of all Florida voters, 55% supported the amendment, 26% opposed it and 19% were undecided. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of Republicans supported the idea, compared to 36% of Democrats and 43% of independents.
The overall survey surveyed 625 registered voters, all of whom said they were likely to vote in the November election. They were surveyed by telephone by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. from Sept. 28 through Thursday, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The same time frame and methods were used to survey 400 registered Hispanic voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
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