Florida News
Published Oct. 13, 2026, 5:34 p.m. ET | Updated Oct. 13, 2026
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Republican candidate for governor Byron Donalds and U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody continue to hold double-digit leads with three weeks until Election Day, according to a new Stetson University poll released Tuesday, while an internal survey from a Republican-aligned firm shows similar strength for Donalds in the governor’s race.
The Stetson University Center for Public Opinion Research survey of modeled likely voters, conducted Oct. 1-9, found Donalds leading Democrat David Jolly 52% to 41% in the race for governor. In the U.S. Senate contest, Moody held the same 52%-41% advantage over Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon. About 5% of voters remained undecided in the governor’s race and 6% in the Senate race, with small shares supporting other candidates.
A separate internal poll from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, first reported by Florida Politics, showed Donalds ahead of Jolly 49% to 43% in a head-to-head matchup and 46% to 39% on a full ballot that includes minor-party and write-in candidates. The firm’s results align with other recent surveys, including a Mason-Dixon poll that had Donalds up 48% to 41% and a James Madison Institute survey showing a 10-point lead.
“Republicans continue to have an advantage in both races,” Kelly Smith, an associate professor of political science at Stetson and co-director of the Center for Public Opinion Research, said in a statement. She noted that the Senate race had narrowed slightly since the center’s September survey, though the change fell within the survey’s design-effect-adjusted precision estimate of about 4.2 percentage points for likely voters.
The Stetson survey, which interviewed 826 Florida adults through an online non-probability panel and based electoral results on 716 registered voters, also found a 9-point Republican edge on a generic congressional ballot, with 50% of likely voters favoring the GOP candidate and 41% the Democratic candidate. That stands in contrast to national generic-ballot polling that has shown Democrats ahead this fall.
President Donald Trump registered 50% approval and 49% disapproval among Florida likely voters in the Stetson poll, while Gov. Ron DeSantis stood at 55% approval and 41% disapproval. Moody, who was appointed to her seat in 2025 and is seeking a full term, posted 55% approval and 34% disapproval, with 12% saying they had not heard enough about her.
Cost of living and inflation remained the top issue for 40% of likely voters. The survey also found that none of the three proposed constitutional amendments on the November ballot had reached the 60% support required for passage, with roughly a quarter of voters undecided on each measure.
A polling memo from the Donalds campaign accompanying the Fabrizio Lee survey highlighted the candidate’s fundraising and field operation. Donalds raised nearly $6 million in a recent one-week reporting period compared with about $2.7 million for Jolly, and had roughly $37 million in cash on hand versus $6 million for his Democratic opponent. The memo said the campaign’s turnout efforts across mail, phones, doors, digital advertising and targeted outreach would reach millions of voters in the final three weeks before Election Day and stated that Republicans showed no evidence of sagging enthusiasm.
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