Political campaign polls are designed to predict likely outcomes based on voter history and input during election season.
But polling accuracy is often hit or miss, as it depends greatly on factors such as the effects of campaign advertising, what information is available to pollsters and the personal backgrounds of those polled. They all play a part in predicting voting behavior on Election Day.
For the 2026 midterm election, in which Democrats scored historic wins in closely watched races pretty much everywhere else, some polls accurately predicted the results of the Florida statewide races, while others got it completely wrong.
Here are five takeaways based on preelection polls and postelection results for some of the races in Florida.
Republican Byron Donalds’ close win over Democrat David Jolly for governor.
Many polls predicted this outcome, but not the small margin between the two candidates. Donalds, the congressman from Naples, won 50.0% of the vote and Jolly, the former congressman from Pinellas County, finished with 48.7%.
St. Pete Polls, a polling site that pulls voters from public voter registration records, conducted a poll from Oct. 25-27 in which it sampled 916 likely voters. The poll predicted Donalds to win with 47.8% of the vote and Jolly to finish with 45.5%.
“The governor’s race specifically was a little more difficult this cycle because Republicans are harder to reach,” said Matt Florell, president of St. Pete Polls.
Florell said his pollsters had to contact twice as many Republicans as Democrats to get a correct proportional sample. He also said crossover voting, in which members of one political party vote for candidates of another one, was an important factor in this race as well.
Amendment 3 passed with just 62% of the vote.
Many polls predicted incorrectly that the state constitutional amendment, aiming to expand the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes, would not get the required 60% of the vote needed for adoption.
Sean Freeder is the faculty director at the University of North Florida Public Opinions Research Lab. He said its poll of 1,471 likely voters from July 20 had two questions about Amendment 3. The initial one: Its passage would require local governments to use property taxes only for core public services. That had a 61% approval rate in the poll.
The results changed with the follow-up: Estimates suggest passage would lead to a municipal budget shortfall of about $11.8 billion over two years. That question caused overall support to drop from 61% to 45%, with opposition increasing from 32% to 47%.
“It’s really difficult to poll on amendments and ballot language compared to candidates,” Freeder said. “Things can change in the last few weeks, and I think that’s especially true with amendments because they deal with policy.”
The same Oct. 27 St. Pete poll predicted a 43.9% approval rate and 39.4% opposition rate with 16.7% undecided. Those numbers ended up being rather low compared to the results.
Democrat voter turnout was underestimated by pollsters.
Across the rest of the country, many Democrats won seats historically held by Republicans. Freeder said this may be a reason why polls may not have been accurate.
“For the last several years, we’ve always underestimated Republicans,” he said. “Now, we have an election where we underestimated Democrats.”
This surprise in voting behavior could encourage pollsters to be more transparent and have more room to take chances on some of the guesses they’re making, Freeder said.
It will also affect both politics and the polling industry as the nation turns its attention to the 2028 presidential election, he said.
While the increased turnout did not change the election results in Florida, it was definitely a factor in creating those thinner margins, Florell said.
“There was a blue wave in Florida,” he said. “It was just tempered by how many super engaged and committed Republicans we have in the state.”
Ashley Moody’s win over Angie Nixon was more secure than expected.
St. Pete’s Oct. 27 poll for the U.S. Senate race in Florida had Moody, a Republican from Hillsborough County, winning with 49% of the vote and Nixon, a Democrat from Jacksonville, finishing with 44.7%. The results showed Moody with 50.9% of the vote and Nixon with 48%.
The estimates were within a few percentage points, but Moody, the incumbent running in a special election, had a clearer advantage that pollsters anticipated. The University of North Florida poll from Oct. 21 had her with 49% of the vote and Nixon with 45%.
Often, when polling potential voters, pollsters typically reference the most recent election that’s most comparable to the current one. Factors like national mood, the method in which people vote, and party registration numbers are constantly changing and must be factored into any poll comparisons across elections, pollsters said.
Freeder said UNF’s polls looked at the 2022 midterm election.
“We don’t know who’s going to show up next Tuesday, so the past is the best predictor of future behavior,” he said. In 2026, he said, “The national mood is totally different.”
Florida’s unaffiliated voting group impacted more statewide races than normal.
In the 2022 midterm election, independent voters were swinging to the right, but in 2026, they’re swinging to the left, Freeder said.
“We have to take that into account, and think about how that is going to affect our weighting strategy,” he said.
A weighting strategy allows pollsters to sort out voter responses based on how likely they are to vote. In Florida, independent and non-party voters have some of the lowest turnout rates. But their presence this year created some of the thinner margins, including the very close governor’s race.
“In the last six years since the pandemic, we have had a heavy inflow of new residents from up North, and most of them are Republican or non-party affiliated,” Florell said. “They have had a pretty dramatic effect just in the last eight years on not only polling, but how the elections are determined.”
Demographics also play an important role in elections, as many people in recent years have moved to Florida from the North.
“At least once a year, we readjust our demographic weighting depending on how often we poll in a specific area.” Florell said.
Polling is an important part of the culture around Election Day. It allows voters to get a sense of what their peers may be thinking come time to vote.
It’s difficult to do accurately, but pollsters said they try to readjust to give the best results, so it can serve their knowledge in the future.
“You always have to remember: Polling is a snapshot in time,” Florell said, adding that last week as always, “It was very interesting to see the results.”