The Final Polls in Florida's Governor Race: Donalds at 48 Percent, Jolly at 44, and One Day Left
The last verified survey of the race, from NYT/Siena, gives Byron Donalds a four-point edge over David Jolly. The race raters call it Likely Republican. Tuesday decides whether they are right.
Florida voters choose their next governor on Tuesday, and the final verified polling of the race shows a lead, not a lock. In the New York Times/Siena survey — fielded Oct. 19 through Oct. 26 among 813 likely voters, and the one verified poll in the fourteen days ending Nov. 2 — Republican Byron Donalds stands at 48 percent and Democrat David Jolly at 44 percent.
The other major public survey of the fall points the same direction with a wider gap. Mason-Dixon, polling for NBC 6 and Telemundo, found Donalds at 48 percent and Jolly at 41 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus four points and 10 percent of voters undecided. Inside that survey sits the number both campaigns spent the final week chasing: independents favored Jolly 47 percent to 28 percent, but 24 percent of them had not made up their minds.
The structural numbers favor the Republican. The Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball both rate the race Likely Republican, and final-week reporting in the Pensacola News Journal put Donalds' fundraising near $158 million against about $24 million for Jolly — the money gap of a candidate running, as Donalds has, on continuing the policies of the last eight years against a former Republican congressman running as a Democrat on affordability and the direction of state policy.
Polls are snapshots, not predictions, and this race now belongs to turnout: Leon County's elections office has said local turnout is trending high for a midterm, and both campaigns made their closing arguments across the state in the final days. The answer arrives Tuesday night.
