Who To Blame for Florida’s High Insurance Costs & More... - Top 3 Takeaways – June 14th, 2024
- Who (and what) to blame for high insurance costs. Earlier this week FAU came out with a poll conducted by Mainstreet Research. At the time it caught my attention for two reasons. First, we’re under five months away from an election cycle so I’m paying extra attention to the polls. Second, I’ve never seen so few Florida-based political polls. It’s been quite the adjustment this Presidential election cycle to see Florida go from having been the ultimate swing state (which previously meant having as many or more polls than any other state) to a perceived red state, which has meant political polls have been few and far between. So anyway, when the FAU poll came in I did what I always do first in determining how credible the results might be. I checked the sample. And what did the sample show? First of all, the pollster outright sampled more Democrats than Republicans in Florida. That’s not a very red state kinda thing to do. But realizing they had a problem with their sample they created what they called a “weighted frequency” to adjust their sample to create Republican majority response. That kind of methodology with a relatively small sample size is less than ideal to say the least. Still,l it would have been at least ok if they’d actually adjusted the sample correctly...but they didn’t, in fact it wasn’t even close. I’ll explain. Based on Florida’s current voter registration information 39.1% of Florida’s registered voters are Republicans and 32.1% of voters are registered Democrats. There’s exactly 7% more registered Republicans in Florida than Democrats right now meaning that any credible sample should be weighted to a 7% GOP advantage. But what did the FAU/Mainstreet Research poll weight to? GOP+2%. So first the pollster oversampled Democrats and then their weighted result still underperformed the state’s demographics by 5%. So, I did what I always do in that situation and closed the poll out because the results of the poll aren’t an accurate reflection of public opinion of Florida’s voters. Not surprisingly, however, many others who are far less diligent across the state have been reporting on its results...generally irresponsibly. As far as the two key political races the poll showed Trump up 6-points over Biden (however with the under sampling that’s likely a double-digit lead). The poll also showed Rick Scott up only two in a likely Senate matchup with Debbie Murcasel-Powell (with the Republican under sampling that’s probably a mid-to high single digit lead). But then there was the contextual stuff.
- And the only thing worse than a poorly sampled and weighted poll is a poorly weighted and sampled poll with even more poorly worded questions. About now you’re likely wondering why my top takeaway today is about who to blame for high insurance costs. This is where it enters the conversation. I’ll introduce this example from Anthony Man in the Sun Sentinel. Quoting his article: The high cost of insurance is a constant cause for concern among Floridians. Voters aren’t sure who deserves the most blame, but many identify Gov. Ron DeSantis as the top culprit. A Florida Atlantic University poll released Wednesday found 34% of voters said they hold DeSantis, governor since January 2017, responsible for the high cost of insurance in Florida. In addition: 27% blamed insurance companies. 26% said they hold President Joe Biden and/or the federal government most responsible. 13% said they didn’t know. Well, Anthony Man was only off by two years in terms of how long DeSantis has been governor. So that’s fun. Man also added this which is instructive of the way the question was polled: The survey didn’t specify if people responding to the question were thinking about windstorm insurance for their homes, the cost of which has been soaring to levels that some people can’t afford it; automobile insurance, which has been rising nationwide as parts costs have increased and more cars have expensive-to-repair technology; or a combination of the two. Right, so we don’t even know what insurance product or insurance products we’re speaking about, but we are polling people ubiquitously about who to blame for them. And then we’re pulling the result from the polling sample that heavily under sampled and under weighted Republicans and come up with DeSantis being “the top culprit”. That’s especially fun. The best answer to that poorly worded question by the way, was the group of people who said “they don’t know” because that was the closest option to a legitimate answer for it.
- Let me walk you through a quick exercise to illustrate the point. Who or what is more responsible for you paying sky high prices for property insurance... Ron DeSantis, Joe Biden or Hurricane Ian? Who or what is more responsible for you paying ultra-high prices for auto insurance? Ron DeSantis, Joe Biden or the person who hit you? The fact of the matter is that Florida is the most at-risk state for a property insurance claim in the country and South Florida is the most at risk region for an auto accident claim in the country. The next in line people you can blame are the attorneys and scam artists (which often have been one-in-the same). The second biggest factor in your property insurance costs are homeowners, contractors and attorneys who were scamming Florida’s property insurance market with bogus and inflated claims prior to the legislative reforms of the past couple of years. Similarly, the second biggest factor in your auto insurance costs being so high, is that for every ambulance you see there are five personal injury attorneys’ chasing it. If you still want to assign blame at that point you can then point to ‘ole Joe because of ‘Bidenflation. The third biggest reason your property and auto insurance costs are so high is due to the inflated cost of construction, parts and repairs. The irony is there is literally only one person provided as a choice who’s taken action to curb the rising costs of the insurance products and that’s DeSantis. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. Poor polling samples, combined with poor questioning, mixed with poor reporting equals a big pile of poo.