Republican Byron Donalds holds a 7-percentage-point advantage over Democrat David Jolly in the Florida governor’s race, according to a new NBC South Florida/Telemundo Station Group poll, while Republican Sen.Ashley Moody is up by 10 points in her matchup against Democratic challenger Angie Nixon.Donalds, a congressman from the southwest corner of the state, is at 48% in the poll, compared with Jolly’s 41%, in a race in which Donalds has had a commanding financial advantage.
(That advantage is just inside the poll’s margin of error, but Donalds has the edge in most of the range of possibilities.)Moody is at 50% in the Senate race, compared with 40% for Nixon, a Democratic Socialists of America-aligned candidate who got into the general election after a surprise primary victory over Democrat Alexander Vindman in August.The results come amid broad Democratic optimism about the 2026 elections, with public polling showing the party making races in some typically red states into competitive contests this year.This poll suggests limits to that apparent momentum in other places.The poll also took a snapshot of the state’s hugely influential bloc of Hispanic voters, largely congregated in South Florida.
In 2024, Donald Trump won Hispanic-heavy Miami-Dade County by roughly 11 points, a significant reversal in a part of the state that had long been Democratic-leaning.Joe Biden won the county by 7 points in 2020.But now, Florida Hispanic voters — including large Cuban, Nicaraguan, Honduran and Colombian populations — appear to be swinging back away from Trump, even as other high-profile Republican candidates hold comfortable leads among Hispanic voters.Donalds holds a 48%-43% lead over Jolly among Hispanic voters, according to the survey, while Moody is up 47%-40% over Nixon.
Trump’s job performance rating, however, is underwater, with 49% disapproving of his job performance, compared with 45% who approve.For SubscribersFOR SUBSCRIBERSLocals called their town ...