With five days to go before Election Day, the final polls for Florida are unlikely to shake Donald Trump’s confidence of winning the Sunshine State, which has not voted Democrat since 2012.
While the Republican candidate was expecting some backlash after a speaker at one of his rallies in New York infamously compared Puerto Rico to a “floating island of garbage,” Trump appears to have kept his marginal lead over Kamala Harris in Florida, according to a Cygnal poll that put him five points ahead of Harris.
The survey, conducted between October 26 and 28 and shared with Florida Politics on Wednesday, covered last Sunday, when comedian and podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe made the racist joke in front of a stunned audience. The comment, which generated outrage across the country, could have been particularly consequential in Florida, which has the second-highest concentration of Puerto Rican voters (5.4 percent) after Connecticut (7.9 percent), according to 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by Axios.
In Florida, Republican Senator Rick Scott and Representatives Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez quickly condemned the comment made by comedian and podcaster Hinchcliffe, which Trump’s campaign has also distanced itself from.
But according to the Cygnal poll, Trump has remained relatively unscathed from the unfortunate event, as he maintains his advantage among Puerto Ricans and other Hispanic voters in the Sunshine State.
The poll gives him the support of 50 percent of Hispanic voters, an improvement from his 46 percent in 2020. But while he leads by 10 points among Hispanics, his lead shrinks to only two points among Puerto Ricans.
Overall, the poll has Trump leading Harris 48 percent to 43 percent. Roughly 5 percent of likely voters are still undecided. The former president also has an edge with swing voters, with an estimated 35 percent backing him over 32 percent supporting Harris.
As much as the polls are still in Trump’s favor, his lead in the Cygnal survey appears diminished compared to a few weeks and months ago, with the gap between the two candidates getting smaller. But other polls released recently paint a much rosier picture for the former president.
According to the latest national poll from the Florida Atlantic University Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab (PolCom Lab) and Mainstreet Research USA, released on Tuesday, Trump leads Harris in Florida 53 percent to 44 percent among likely voters (+9).
A poll conducted by ActiVote among 400 likely voters between October 11 and 27 and released on Monday shows Trump leading Harris by 11.6 percent in the Sunshine State.
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