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Latest Florida Polls 2016: Presidential Swing State Could Shift The Race

By Zachary Volkert
Published on: 09:18 PST, Nov 5, 2016

Just like 2000, the 2016 Florida polls could see the swing state deciding the presidential race. Also, once again, it’s difficult to say who will reign victorious there on Tuesday.

After nearly a year of assurances that Donald Trump could never become the 2016 GOP nominee much less the president, polls are indicating close competition for electoral votes across the nation. Some swing states previously thought to be battlegrounds — namely Ohio and Arizona — are now leaning Trump. Together, they make up 30 electoral votes.

That’s not good news for Hillary Clinton, who has strongholds on the West Coast and in New England but could fail to reach the required 270 electoral votes if she loses some of the states where her lead is less commanding. Of these swing states, Florida is the biggest prize.

Because of that, attention is honing in on the Florida polls, the most searched of the last week before the presidential elections. There, Hillary is holding ahead narrowly in the majority of the latest surveys.

UPDATE: Clinton and Trump are now tied in Florida in two polls released on the Monday before Nov. 8. Both Quinnipiac and CBS News/YouGov released data using 884 and 1,188 likely voters, respectively.

Still, it’s worth pointing out that one of the largest of the polls has Trump coming out ahead by four percentage points. Conducted by the Remington Research Group, the poll surveyed 989 likely voters culled from the state’s voter registry. In that questionnaire, Clinton beat out Trump among African Americans, Hispanics, young people and women, but lost out to her opponent sharply with white men and voters over the age of 29. His lead was also outside of the poll’s margin of error: 3.1 percentage points.

However, both the Florida polls with the largest sample size and latest data put Clinton ahead in the state’s 2016 presidential race.

In Gravis’ numbers, conducted on Monday, Clinton was 2 percentage points ahead of Trump. Though the poll has a margin of error of 2.2. percentage points, it had a significant sample size of 1,195 registered voters.

The latest poll, conducted by Fox 13 and Opinion Savvy, gave Clinton an advantage of 4 percentage points. That survey had about half the number of participants with 603 respondents, and its margin or error also fell within Clinton’s lead — 4.0 percentage points.

The two other most relevant Florida polls also show a Clinton win — though it is by just one and two percentage points, respectively, in the numbers from CNN/ORC and Quinnipiac. In both sets of data, her lead out falls within the margin of error.

In Five Thirty Eight‘s accuracy ratings of these Florida polls, the highest marks went to Quinnipiac. The pollster has called 87 percent of its 169 predictions accurately. The lowest marks went to Opinion Savvy, which had only called 71 percent of 105 races correctly; it also had a sizable spread with final results of 7.8 percentage points.

Remington Research, the only poll which calls Trump winning Florida, was not rated by the election data aggregator. Considered a right-leaning pollster, it is headed by Axiom founder Jeff Roe, who previously led the Ted Cruz campaign. Roe indicated several times that Cruz would endorse Trump until the former GOP hopeful finally did and recently retweeted a video of the Republican presidential candidate praising his polling.

Nationally, most comparisons are still showing a win for Hillary with just over the 270 required electoral votes. That success hinges upon her taking all of the states leaning Democrat as well as those solidly in her favor. Using the same criteria, Trump would have to win big in all three swing states — Florida, New Hampshire, and Utah — to even reach 248, according to The Washington Post. The paper’s comparison does, however, call North Carolina as a Democrat-leaning state, even though Trump has actually come out ahead in multiple polls there.

In the national popular vote, the race appears to be closer than ever. The largest poll — with a massive sample size of 5,360 — shows a 50-50 dead heat. The next largest poll, from LA Times, shows a 4-percentage point Trump victory — though this is within the 4.5 percentage point margin of error. On average in the seven polls aggregated by Real Clear Politics, Clinton was ahead by 1.6 percentage points.

Do you think the latest Florida polls foretell the swing state falling in favor of 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

[Featured Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

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