Is Florida in Play? What Polls Show Ahead of Trump Daytona Beach Rally - Newsweek

President Donald Trump will hold a midterm rally in Daytona Beach on Friday as Republicans seek to boost turnout in two statewide races that are closer than expected.

Once a perennial battleground, Florida has shifted sharply toward the GOP in recent election cycles, yet its current polling margins are well short of Trump’s 13.1-point victory there in 2024.

Voters in the state’s U.S. Senate election will choose between Ashley Moody, the sitting senator appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2025 after serving six years as Florida attorney general, and Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville lawmaker first elected to the Florida House in 2020 and now seeking statewide office.

Republicans are emphasizing Nixon’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) membership, while Democrats argue affordability will carry greater weight with voters.

Meanwhile, Florida’s open governor’s race pits Republican U.S. Representative Byron Donalds, a prominent Trump ally from southwest Florida, against Democrat David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who left the GOP and is attempting a political comeback under a new party banner.

The contest tests whether Florida’s rightward shift will endure beyond term-limited DeSantis, with Donalds offering Republican continuity and Jolly courting independents and disaffected GOP voters through a campaign focused on affordability and property insurance.

RealClearPolling averages for the Senate and gubernatorial contests put Moody 6.2 points ahead and Donalds 5 points in front, respectively.

Prediction markets still favor both Republicans, although traders see greater uncertainty in the governor’s contest: Polymarket prices imply about a 90 percent chance of a Moody victory and a 73 percent chance of a Donalds win.

RealClearPolling ranks the Senate race as Leans GOP, while calling the governorship a Toss Up.

The Cook Political Report, however, rates the Senate race Solid Republican but moved the governorship into its more competitive Lean Republican category at the beginning of October.

Newsweek emailed all four campaigns for comment on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning and is awaiting responses.

The rally begins at 7 p.m. Friday at the Ocean Center, four days before Election Day and one week after Trump appeared in Fort Myers.

The president, who frequently spends time in his adopted home state and at his Mar-a-Lago estate, then cast his ballot early alongside first lady Melania Trump in West Palm Beach the following day. He told reporters he had voted for Republicans across the ticket.

Evan Power, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, told Newsweek that party officials were "confident where we are." He denied that private polling drove the rally decision.

Asked why Trump would spend scarce campaign time in an apparently safe state, Power pointed to turnout and Mar-a-Lago.

"The president, as everyone knows, likes to spend as much time in Mar-a-Lago as humanly possible," he told Newsweek in a brief Wednesday phone call.

"But, beyond that, and turnout's important in elections, he's willing to help us turn out our Republican voters, and we appreciate that. He's always spent a lot of time in Florida, and we know it's close and dear to his heart. So we appreciate that."

Power added: "I think he’s spent 30 days on the road, so you run out of places really to go at the end of the day, and this gets him to Mar-a-Lago so he can spend his evening."

Power said that Trump was the party’s "best communicator" and could mobilize Republican voters "like no one else is."

Asked specifically why Trump chose to visit Daytona, Power said: "That’s just a place where we have a lot of our Republican voters. It's a place where the president can generate turnout and drive us to a bigger number."

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried offered the opposite interpretation. She said that the second presidential visit in a week reflected Republican concern rather than confidence.

"You don’t fly a historically unpopular president in twice in one week to defend a state you think is safe," Fried told Newsweek in an emailed statement.

"This is a last-ditch effort to prop up flailing Republican campaigns."

Nestpoint managing director and veteran Republican strategist John Thomas called the appearance "turnout insurance in a tough national environment." He said that its purpose was to draw lower-propensity supporters who often skip nonpresidential elections.

"The president is taking nothing for granted," Thomas told Newsweek in emailed comments.

"Moody’s lead is tighter than Trump’s 13-point 2024 win, but that tracks softer presidential numbers and normal midterm dynamics more than any state-specific collapse. Florida still leans Republican on registration and fundamentals."

GOP strategist Brittany Martinez is a former aide to U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. She said that Republicans were "working to preserve margins they once could take for granted." However, she added that their attacks on Nixon would not eliminate concerns over "affordability or the administration’s performance."

Political scientist Costas Panagopoulos told Newsweek that rallies could energize committed supporters, even if they had little persuasive effect on undecided voters.

"The strongest likely impact is on mobilizing base partisans," Panagopoulos said. "Even if they themselves have voted, for example, they could still be motivated to try to persuade others to vote, or contribute money, or volunteer in Republican campaigns."

Panagopoulos added that the evidence about Trump’s impact in congressional races was "mixed at best." He said such appearances could help candidates gain attention but might have no effect or prove counterproductive if they generated fresh controversies.

The analysis corresponds with Panagopoulos’s broader research arguing that shrinking numbers of persuadable voters have led modern campaigns to place greater emphasis on mobilizing their existing partisan base.

Midterms have historically punished the party controlling the White House: the president’s party lost House seats in 18 of the 20 contests between 1946 and 2022.

Republicans retain formidable structural advantages in Florida, including 5.68 million active registered voters compared with 4.13 million Democrats as of September 30.

The latest public survey places Moody ahead, without reproducing the scale of Trump’s last statewide victory.

A New York Times/Siena poll, fielded from October 19 to 25 among 813 likely voters, put the Republican ahead 50 percent to 44 percent, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 points.

RealClearPolling’s October 2-27 average stands at 49.4 percent for Moody and 43.2 percent for Nixon.

Power rejected the suggestion that those figures demonstrate underperformance.

"When you’re the party in power, and there’s midterm headwinds, that changes a bit," he told Newsweek. "A win is a win, and we expect a big win, comfortable win here in Florida."

The Times/Siena survey also gave Donalds a 48 percent-to-44 percent lead over Jolly, using the same 813-person sample, October 19-25 field dates and plus or minus 3.9-point margin.

RealClearPolling’s October 2-27 average shows a wider 48.8 percent-to-43.8 percent advantage.

The Cook Political Report’s October race rating was downgraded from Likely Republican to Lean Republican. It reflects doubts about whether Republican spending and the state’s partisan fundamentals will translate into the commanding result once expected.

Its analysis identifies Jolly, a former Republican congressman, as unusually capable of appealing to independents and disaffected GOP voters.

Donalds previously reduced the prominence of Trump references on his campaign website, replacing an endorsement-led presentation with material focused on affordability, insurance and government transparency.

His campaign denied that the redesign represented an attempt to distance the candidate from the president. Donalds said he remained proud of the endorsement.

At the time of writing, Kalshi gave Moody an 88 percent chance of winning and Donalds 71 percent. Polymarket placed the corresponding figures at 91 percent and 72 percent.

Prediction markets translate the prices paid by traders into implied probabilities, allowing new information to be incorporated quickly.

They can nevertheless be distorted by limited liquidity, participant preferences and herd behavior, so they are neither polls nor guarantees.

Decision Desk HQ was less bullish than those Senate markets, rating Moody Likely Republican with a 78 percent probability, while classifying Donalds Lean Republican at 67 percent.

Nixon’s DSA affiliation gives Republicans an especially resonant line in a state shaped by people who fled communist governments in Cuba and Venezuela.

The issue intensified after Nixon was asked in an interview with CBS, broadcast on October 26, whether Cuba is a dictatorship. She replied: "That is what people have told me. I have never been to Cuba, and so I will have to take their word for it."

Nixon later said she believed Cubans who had described the country that way, and CBS removed a post that it acknowledged had not accurately represented her answer.

Power told Newsweek that her views were "not welcome here" and suggested she should "go to Cuba" to live among the people she claimed to support.

But the Florida Democratic Party rejects this characterization.

Fried told Newsweek that voters were instead focused on "through-the-roof costs" for gas, groceries, rent and property insurance, and rejected the Republican effort to make the Senate contest about Nixon’s political affiliation.

"Republicans can try to make this race about a label, but, in a second Trump administration defined by a crushing cost of living and rampant corruption, that’s not what people care about," Fried said. "Working-class voters of every background and party want solutions, not culture wars and chaos."

Friday’s crowd will offer an early indication of enthusiasm, but Tuesday’s turnout will answer the larger question: whether Trump is securing already-favorable territory or protecting Republicans from a national backlash powerful enough to reach his adopted home state.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.

Register for our November 10 discussion, 'Newsweek Webinar: How the Politics of AI Could Shape Midterms,' which will examine how AI policy played in key races, data centers, lobbying and the political lines that emerged.