Casey DeSantis’ circle may relish a recent University of North Florida poll, but Gov. Ron DeSantis’ former pollster calls the results “dead wrong.”
Ryan Tyson’s The American Promise issued a memo pouring cold water on survey results from UNF’s Public Opinion Research Lab (PORL).
The survey in question shows the First Lady polling ahead of U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds in a potential 2026 GOP Primary for voters. The results show 32% of Florida Republicans supporting Casey DeSantis, 29% backing Donalds, and others polling in single digits.
But the memo noted the lead comes almost entirely from people who don’t vote in Primary elections, where the Republican candidates would potentially face off in August 2026.
“The obvious problem with UNF’s methodology is that they are forecasting the results of a primary election using voters who do not vote in primary elections. In a state where the turnout for midterm primaries is less than half of the November general election, conflating registered voters with primary voters is a big mistake,” the memo reads.
Crosstabs for the UNF poll show respondents include 320 voters who cast votes in the 2024 Florida Primary, but 477 who did not.
Moreover, those who participated in the 2024 Primary strongly favored Donalds. Among that set, about 37% support Donalds, 22% back Casey DeSantis and 10% prefer former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz. Meanwhile, voters who skipped the Primary last year lean heavily for DeSantis, who gets 37% to Donalds’ 23% and Gaetz’s 8%.
That such a stark difference exists is concerning itself, according to the Promise memo. That the UNF poll’s final findings depend on voters who don’t typically engage in Primary elections undermines the results entirely.
“The deeper concern is that UNF is likely gathering insights from people who are ideologically different than the voters who will determine the Republican nominee for governor and other offices,” the memo continues.
“In a number of instances throughout the survey, the voters that make up the ‘non-primary’ majority of UNF’s sample exhibit more moderate perspectives on key Republican issues than the voters that have actual primary vote history.”
The American Promise for years has served as a polling outlet for Tyson, a South Florida-based pollster who worked for Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign last election cycle.
Asked about several issues including whether they supported President Donald Trump in 2024, voted for an amendment decriminalizing marijuana, or if they have a favorable view of the Alligator Alcatraz center in South Florida, non-Primary voters showed less conservative behavior, and it’s those voters where Casey DeSantis performs well.
Tyson said that leads him to a completely different analysis than that of UNF pollsters.
“A single poll will never be dead-on, but it can be dead wrong,” Tyson writes. “And in the case of UNF, filling their sample with non-primary voters produced a headline for this Republican gubernatorial race that is not grounded in reality.”
UNF’s pollsters disagrees with this analysis.
“Yes, primary voters are different than non-primary voters – hence us including that breakout in the crosstabs and in the press release. We wanted to present how registered Republicans feel on a range of issues,” Matt Binder, PORL’s faculty director, posted on X. “Read the actual press release and analysis I provide.”
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