There's a new Saint Leo University poll that shows Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam now has about an eight-point lead over U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis in the Republican race for Florida’s Governor.
This survey of 500 Florida voters was conducted last week.
What's interesting is that the president was just in town supporting DeSantis, and he was considered to have a double lead over Putnam.
So, is the St. Leo poll or -- for that matter -- any of the recent political polls accurate?
“Well, they haven’t proven to be in the last few elections,” voter Jerry Lamascus said.
Lamascus, like other voters casting their ballots early this year, is more than a little skeptical about those political polls that are supposed to tell us who’s ahead of whom.
“I think the Trump election proved that,” Lamascus said.
10News political expert Susan MacManus says there’s good reason for people to question the accuracy of political polling these days.
“First of all, there’s worry, always, about the polls' accuracy,” MacManus said. “Many of these polls have had very small response samples and response rates.”
Not only that, but polls are also only as good as the honesty of people participating them.
MacManus says in the 2016 election, polls were skewed, mostly by GOP voters who didn’t want to publicly disclose their support for Donald Trump.
“Republicans now have a history of not being truthful, or not answering pollsters,” MacManus said. “We saw that in the 2016 presidential. So, there is some of that.”
“I think a lot of people are afraid to give their honest opinion,” said voter Anna Orr, leaving a polling place Tuesday in Tampa.
If you really want to cut through the clutter and find out who’s leading in many races these days, the most precise polling, says MacManus, is being done by the campaigns.
“Candidates themselves are doing private polls that you and I will never see,” MacManus said. “Polls that are much more accurate. They guide where they go. They guide what kind of ads they run.”
So, before you go calling an election result, or writing off a comeback, consider the modern-day pollsters’ paradox: trying to make an accurate prediction in an age when some voters are hard to reach, some who are reached don’t want to talk about it, and many of those who do -- a full 20 to 30 percent -- say they make up their minds at the last minute.
Pollsters still defend their accuracy.
Opinion poll website 538 found that in several gubernatorial and special elections since the 2016 election, the accuracy of polls had been in line with the average by historical standards.
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