Decoding Another FAU Poll w/Bombshell Takeaways – Top 3 Takeaways – August 15th, 2024
- Predictable. Democrats throughout Florida and around the country worked themselves into a tizzy on Wednesday as a fresh FAU poll seemingly made their day. FAU’s latest poll which was released under the headline... Trump Maintains Narrow Lead Over Harris showed Trump with only a three-point lead over Harris in Florida. A lead, that if true, would mean that he’s ahead by less today than he won Florida by four years ago – at a time when Democrats still held a voter registration advantage in Florida. That’s especially notable because it was just this week that Republicans opened up a 1 million voter advantage over Democrats in this state. This is an especially important point that I’ll pick up on in a moment. FAU’s political science professor and co-director of the PolCom Lab had this to say: The narrowing gap between Trump and Harris is consistent with the tightening we have seen in other states. If this trend holds, we may see a competitive race in Florida. That news led to headlines like these throughout Florida and across the country... ABC News Tampa Bay: Florida Poll Shows Trump with a 3-point lead, inside the margin of error. Palm Beach Post: FAU-Mainstreet poll shows Trump-Harris contest "tightening" even in pretty red Florida. Florida Democratic Party: BREAKING: Latest FAU Poll Shows Kamala Harris Within Two Points of Donald Trump in Florida. Speaking of Florida’s Democrats, state Party Chair Nikki Fried, who has a proclivity for weed, had this to say: Two points is striking distance — don’t count Florida out. Donald Trump and Rick Scott are in trouble in Florida.
- Now, a few points about a few of those statements. First, for the fake news ABC Tampa team. How about actually downloading the poll and reading the data before reporting on it? Had you done so you would have found on the second page of the 44-page document (and the first page that had anything other than a picture of FAU’s Owl on it) this not-so-insignificant detail that directly contradicts the headline to your story: Since the poll was partially completed online, a margin of error cannot be assigned to the poll. Maybe they didn’t teach you to read source material in journalism school? And for Nikki Fried and the party of “big weed”. Perhaps you were high (?) when talking about two points because the poll, even when taken at face value, showed a 3-point Trump advantage – one that was 3.2% to be precise. But here’s once again the biggest deal about this poll. Much like the previous poll produced by FAU the sample is not even close to being credible. First of all, in a state with over a million more Republicans than Democrats FAU sampled a majority of Democrats for this survey. Then they weighed this survey to adjust for the sample’s obvious deficiencies. But did they weigh the survey to reflect the current composition of Florida voters? Nope. They weighted it to reflect the 2020 election results in Florida. Florida’s Democrats had about a 1% lead in voter registration on Election Day 2020. Florida’s Republicans currently lead Democrats by over 7%. What this means is that the FAU poll that purports to show a three-point presidential race under-sampled Republicans by 8%. Otherwise taking the FAU poll at face value a corrected sample of this poll would likely feature a double-digit race.
- Remarkable. It’s remarkable to me just how poorly sampled and thus how poorly reported polling consistently can be (and btw, let this be a warning about national polling samples for that matter as well) but what’s also remarkable is what the poll said about Florida’s highest profile proposed constitutional amendments as well. In FAU’s poll Amendment 3, the recreational marijuana initiative, and Amendment 4, the abortion initiative both polled with 56% support – 4-points less than what’s needed for these proposals to pass...and again this is with a polling sample that overrepresented Democrats by about 8-points. All the recent polls from other pollsters have suggested that both amendments were pacing well above 60%. This poll, conducted with what should be an especially favorable sample for these two amendments, shows both falling well short. It could be an outlier, or it could be an indication that as more Floridians are learning about what these amendments would actually do, IE abortions on demand up to the point of fetal viability (which would be determined by abortion clinics – gee I wonder what the clinics that make money by killing babies will see given the opportunity) and people free to be openly smoking weed in public spaces as they please. They’ve begun to reconsider their positions. There’s an awful lot on the line in this year’s presidential election cycle. One that is truly the most important election cycle of our lifetimes. But not to be overlooked by what is happening at the top of the ticket is how our state could be permanently reshaped by what will be at the bottom of our tickets in the form of these proposed constitutional amendments. What happens with those two proposals will say a lot about who we are as a people and where we are as a state. It’s my hope that the answer is not one with the most radical abortion policy in the country, one that’d be to the left of even California. And a state that wouldn’t smell as rotten as walking in just about any city in several western states. There was another interesting note from the newest FAU poll. It was about news consumption: 49% of voters listen to news radio at least four days a week, with older voters more likely to tune in daily. Talk radio remains a significant source of information for many voters, especially those with early morning and late afternoon commutes. Its format often combines reporting and commentary, offering listeners both a chance to find out about issues and to find out how people like them think about issues. Local radio especially contributes to the sense of what people around us are thinking and thinking about, and often flies under the radar compared with newspapers, TV, and social media.