Mike's On Mic | Episode 138: UNF Poll Deep Dive with Dr. Sean Freeder

[00:00:01] Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike Mikes on Mic, a conversation about politics, government, and Jacksonville with 50-year opinion leaders Mike Hightower, Mike Tolbert, and award-winning broadcaster and longtime political observer, Mike Miller. Welcome to another episode of Mike's On Mic. I'm Mike Miller, along with Mike Hightower, who's back with us again after us receiving so many responses from people wondering where you were and wishing you well.

[00:00:29] And I'm glad you wrote that line for the ROS here so that we could say that in this. I just want you to know all those cards, how much money it costs to send all that stuff in here. No, I did. I searched over about a dozen folks. And thank you. I'm back. Very good. It's good to have you here. Appreciate it. During the interview on our last podcast with the Florida politics columnist A.G. Gronkarski, we discussed the recent July UNF poll regarding the races that we're going to be facing coming up in 2020.

[00:00:59] And even 2028, for that matter. Today, we're going to be talking about the poll's findings with Dr. Sean Frieder, who is UNF's political science professor and director now of UNF's Public Opinion Research Lab. And Dr. Frieder, it's so good to have you back with us once again. And thank you for joining us here in studio. Hey, gentlemen, thanks for having me back on. You're welcome. More than welcome. Two more visits, you get a good jacket. All right. I'm looking forward to it. It's a used one, but we'll get it to you. Even still. Mr. Tolbert, kick us off.

[00:01:27] Yeah, I want to add my welcome back, Dr. Frieder. We appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Your UNF poll said Republicans still maintain a voter advantage in statewide elections. But the Republican margin seems to be narrow than it was in 2022 and 2024. Given that, what does this latest poll tell you about how competitive Democrats can be in November? And how important will independent voters and turnout be?

[00:01:57] So independent voters and turnout is pretty much the name of the game. You know, if you're looking for signs of change, the first thing you'd look at is their major shift in party registrants. There are people shifting from one party to the other, turning from one party to registering as no party affiliation. And we don't really see anything like that in terms of the trend. So Republicans still have the overwhelming registration advantage. I think that's going to be the case for a long time coming still. Nothing's really changed there.

[00:02:22] So as you said, the next two factors that are really going to affect things are who actually shows up to turn out in this election and what do independents think? I'll start with the last one first. Independents in this election, they're going to shift to the left. And this is again, this is a really standard finding in elections that when one party controls the White House, especially when they control the White House and Congress, that party finds it particularly difficult in that following midterm election to do well. You go back over the past 30, 40 years, you find a couple exceptions.

[00:02:51] After 9-11, the Republican Party was able to maintain its power largely on the back of sympathy for what happened there. And in 2022, Democrats were able to somewhat survive without as bad of a midterm, mostly on the backs of the Dobbs decision with abortion that fired Democrats up enough to turn out. But this is looking for any number of reasons, like a standard midterm election where the party in power is up against the ropes. The party out of power is hungrier for it.

[00:03:15] Usually in those cases, one, independents more likely to turn in favor of whoever the out party is, especially these days. It's an anti-incumbent mood out there generally nationwide. I would say a little bit less so in the state of Florida specifically, maybe, but anti-incumbent generally. So independents probably shifting to the left. And then the other main factor is who's going to turn out on one hand in midterm elections compared to presidential elections. Those that are likely to turn out generally are the ones that are really going to show up.

[00:03:43] So as soon as the president drops off the ballot, you lose people with lower levels of education. You lose young people. You lose Latinos and Asians to a certain extent, all groups that are historically less likely to turn out to vote. On the other hand, you are looking at probably again because of that wave of frustration with those out of power. Democrats more likely to turn out for that reason. Republicans more likely to be on the older side. So that might somewhat mute some of that turnout advantage.

[00:04:09] The number to think about in the state of Florida that I have in my mind is in 2022, there's a 12 percent turnout differential in favor of Republicans. The number is going to be less than that. And how much less it is than 12 percent is really going to make the difference in this election. For the most recent poll we did, we're far enough out that we decided to just use the 2022 landmark as our weight. So we went with a 12 percent turnout differential. I think it's probably going to be less than that.

[00:04:36] I'm putting myself out there right now, but in my gut, it feels like somewhere in the 6 percent to 8 percent range. Republicans still have the advantage in the state of Florida given the registration advantage. But if that number goes down theoretically to 6 percent, all of a sudden we've got some very competitive races. Certainly the governor's race, maybe the Senate race. If it's close to 8 or 9 percent, then the Republicans probably continue to survive in the state of Florida. But it'll be definitely closer than we saw in previous elections. I know Mike Tolbert has a follow up on this and we're going to get to it in just a second.

[00:05:06] Mike, excuse me for jumping in on you. But before we get off that and into affordability and other issues, tell me about the demographics. I'm always interested in looking at the 18 to 34s and 35 to 54 and the 55 plus. And then, of course, even those that are not voting at all. But are we seeing any trends, any differences in the younger demographic and the older demographic over the previous elections? Are they still breaking out pretty much the same way?

[00:05:32] So to get into a little bit of the back end of polling, what we have to figure out on our end is, first of all, who are we talking to? Is it a representative sample? And 20 years ago, you could randomly call landlines and be pretty assured that you're getting a very nice representative sample anymore for any number of reasons. People not picking up their phones, having cell phones, making it easier to screen calls, exhaustion of talking to people, telemarketers, etc. You're not going to get a random sample just on your own. So that means we have to figure out what do we think turnout is going to look like.

[00:06:01] And that's polling turning into a bit more of an art now. And we have to identify who our likely voters are. To a certain extent, we have to make some guesses in this particular in this poll that we just had, for instance, we just we for sort of random reasons. And it's unusual. We had an unusually high percentage of Republicans who responded to our poll. We know that I think was a 20, 22 percent advantage for Republicans. We know it's not going to look like that in in November. So we have to weight that down to our expectation of 12 percent. So it's somewhat hard to tell from who we're contacting what those trends are going to look like.

[00:06:30] But this is where we turn it a little bit from the science to the art end of things. As I was saying before, for a midterm election, particularly difficult to get young people to turn out. It's always difficult to get young people to turn out. Age other than education is the most significant predictor of voter turnout in any election. Young people, particularly under the age of 30, really, really hard to get them to turn out. Folks above the age of 50, especially above 60, very easy to get them to turn out in an election without a president running.

[00:06:55] That means I think it's still going to be hard to get young people to turn out because young people also lean somewhat to the left. This is where you'd say if they were very fired up about the Democratic Party, that would be a huge opportunity for them to turn out in large numbers. Back in 2018, we saw really high turnout, relatively speaking, for young people. I'm not necessarily convinced that we're going to see that again in 2026.

[00:07:17] And the reason why many problems as a Republican Party might have in terms of public opinion nationwide and somewhat in the state right now, Democrats are not exactly particularly popular themselves. It is harder to get people, particularly young people and particularly those on the left, to turn out against a party rather than for a party. As we're going to see in the primary tonight in Michigan, Israel is a major issue. Huge. General things on economics are major issues for young people. The party has an age gap. It has an education gap. It has a little bit of a race gap.

[00:07:46] There's factionalism in both parties. But because of that factionalism within the Democratic Party, I think that makes it difficult to expect young people to turn out in particularly large numbers. And that might somewhat weaken the advantage Democrats might otherwise have in terms of turnout. Okay, Mike, Tolbert, you've got that follow up and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I wanted to get that in. No, I'm glad you did that, Mike Miller. Nationwide, Dr. Frieder, affordability tops all the voter concerns.

[00:08:11] And according to the UNF poll, it also is top of mind for Florida voters of both parties. Now, I know you're not just an academic that you have actually worked in political campaigns. If you were advising the candidates for governor right now, what would you tell them they should be saying about affordability? So to give a little background, we asked affordability two different ways across two different polls.

[00:08:37] Back in February, we first just asked, say, what's the most important problem facing America or Florida? It was overwhelmingly affordability. About 50% straightaway just said something related to affordability. For this most recent poll, we figured nothing's really changed in the last six months. In fact, it's probably moved even more in the direction of affordability being a concern. So rather than asking that question again, we decided to drill down and say when it comes to affordability, what types of things are a concern to you? And we found pretty even across the board, we gave five different response options.

[00:09:05] We're concerned about inflation, low wages, the unemployment rate. You're concerned about property taxes, property insurance. And it was almost a five-way split across them. Housing was number one. Housing costs, yeah, that's right. And so there's about a five-way tie between all of these ones with a little bit of a bump towards housing being a concern. So affordability is top of mind. The way that manifests, as you can tell from the poll, is very different depending on what type of person you're asking.

[00:09:29] Affordability is definitely the message of messages that any campaign, Democrats, Republicans, independents, you can't ignore affordability. It has to be the first and last message out of your mouth during this election season. In terms of crafting a message, it's a really interesting question because if this was when I was back in campaigning a little bit, my God, 15, 20 years ago, my answer would be somewhat different. I think that back then it would still be a little bit more of the traditional campaigning game where if you say the right things, this or that, you just at least give a little bit of lip service to people's pain.

[00:09:58] That's what people really want to hear. People are deeply frustrated at this point with affordability. And I don't think really either party has their pulse on what the magic words are that can make people want to listen to them and vote for them. So I think whatever that message is, platitudes will not do it anymore. It's already difficult enough to cut through advertising noise. There are so many different ways people's attention are drawn in so many different directions right now that your traditional political campaign messaging is it's just not going to work anymore.

[00:10:25] I see a lot of people saying things, I'm going to restore the economy, we're going to build back stronger families and give you a good job. And the voters are going to say, yeah, I've heard this a million times before from a million people in a million different ways. I think if you really want to stand out, I think you have to get very creative. I think that could be creative in terms of what proposals you're offering. I think that could be creative in terms of the way that you're delivering the message. I think that you really have to think of it as a sub-targeted, and this might get so much to where we're going next with this question, but you think of it as a sub-targeted question.

[00:10:54] Different age groups, different education groups, different racial groups, they probably need to hear a message that's more specific to their particular plights in order to make them happy. So if I was advising someone's campaign right now, I would be saying here's not the general message you need to give on affordability. Here's the seven different targeted messages you need depending on which crowd you're in front of. I was going to say read the room. Read the room. Read the room. Read the room. And respond that way. Mike? Dr. Vigar, good to have you back, seriously. Thank you. I want to follow up on another question about affordability because it's very complex.

[00:11:24] My question is, are Republicans, Democrats, voters worried about the same issue but for different reasons? And in this situation, as you've just said, they're frustrated. So who do they blame for the affordability problem? Is it local government, Tallahassee, Washington, some of the above, all of the above? Yeah, that's a great question. So to go back to sort of a base of the question that we asked, I said there's five different categories. And we do, interestingly, we find Democrats and Republicans talk differently about which of those they emphasize.

[00:11:55] Even though it's somewhat of a five-way tie, when you talk to Democrats, they're much more likely to talk about inflation and low wages. Republicans are more likely to talk about property tax, property insurance. And both parties are likely to talk about housing costs generally. So there's first a way they're talking about it. Secondly, I would say, what explanation do we have for why we see those differences? And I think there's a couple different ways of thinking about it. One, you can kind of take it at face value that these are really the concerns that they genuinely have on each side. And they're saying what they're concerned about. So that's why you're seeing the differences.

[00:12:25] I think that aligns somewhat with demographic concerns. If you're younger, you're going to be more concerned about your wages. If you are older, you're going to be more concerned about property taxes and insurance because you're more likely to be a homeowner. The other explanation is that people know what their political camps prefer to talk about. And they follow the messaging. The Republican government in Florida and elsewhere has made a lot more hay about property tax, particularly in Florida, property insurance. If you were trying to say, how do I speak about this issue in a way that my party and other people I respect are comfortable speaking about it?

[00:12:54] You tend to mirror their language. And it might be the same for Democrats who have heard a lot more about Democrats are critical of the nationwide economy in terms of handling of inflation. Trump's numbers are broadly negative across the board there. So they're more comfortable using language that implies that Trump has maybe not been as good on this issue as people would like. And that kind of leads me to talking about who they maybe blame on this. We don't ask this question directly, but from other research that I've seen on where does economic blame go? It really tends to start nationally first.

[00:13:21] And I think that's probably the correct inference that so many issues at this point, the economy is really national that people start there and they broadly think about national politics generally the most. Whatever is easiest of mine to conjure, that's usually the national politics stuff. That's usually the president. That's Congress. I think the blame goes there first. From that point on, I think if there are specific issues that are very identifiable for your state, that's where maybe state level blame comes in.

[00:13:48] So here in the state of Florida, with cost of living somewhat more under control than, say, if you were in California or New York, I think that you get a lot less concern here relative to there in terms of local and state politicians. But if you're in those places where you can point to like, I just came back from California, $6 a gallon gas there, you know, sky high property rates, etc. It's much easier to say, I know there's a state level problem that's different than the rest of the country. Therefore, I'm going to direct some of my ire to state and local politicians.

[00:14:16] So I would say that I think voters think that the head rots from the top and the fish rots from the head. National first by a long margin, then state and then local probably a distant third, even if local plays an enormous role in economics. Still not seen that way. Let me see if I can artfully ask this question. People are moving here. You've talked about taxes. What's happening in some of the big states? So it's us, Texas, a couple of places that come in here. Because we don't have a state income tax and we have those kind of things.

[00:14:45] And you've got this influx of all these new people coming from states that were there. That were there. Do you see that skewing how people view the affordability of this migration that is coming from other states who left those states because of it? You've said high proper tax, high gases. Is there a little bit like if you think this is bad, you should have seen where I came from. Are you seeing that?

[00:15:08] Yeah, at least in the economic and political science literature that I've seen, people, when they try and figure out what the economy is like, they really do relative comparisons in their minds. So if you're one of those transplants from a different state, if you're from New York or California coming here, you might for at least the first several years feel a palpable sense of relief. That might take the form of income tax. That might take the form of just lower cost of living generally. So for at least the initial period of time, I think that makes you feel relieved that you're in a state that has those problems a bit more under control.

[00:15:38] After time goes on, I think we tend to forget what things are like and you tend to get used to it. And then a small change in things getting higher in your state. You're now comparing it this year to the previous year. Yeah. And all of a sudden you're unhappy. Even if you were to maybe move back to one of those states, you realize, oof, wow, that was particularly painful to go back under an income tax or whatever. I want to get into the Homestead exemption proposal. Before we do, though, I just want to think, and this is ironic, but Tallahassee Circuit Judge David Frank, today is August the 4th when we're taping this, by the way, folks.

[00:16:08] And it just came out today that this judge in Tallahassee decided that the language used in both the introduction of the proposal as well as in the summary of the proposal was unconstitutional in his mind. Right. So that's that's the big elephant that just came into the room. Nothing against Republicans. That wasn't the elephant I was talking about. Are you sure? Yes. OK, the donkey, the donkey that just came into the room. That makes you feel very OK.

[00:16:36] Tell us, Sean, what is this going to mean and what's it going to do, you think, with the electorate as far as whether they support or oppose this? So we saw this lawsuit coming down the pipeline as we did our most recent poll and knowing that the ballot language was going to make a big difference. We asked about support for the property tax amendments in our poll. We asked the question two different ways to get at this if the hypothetical scenario of what the ballot language is going to look at.

[00:17:00] The first way is more this way the state would have wanted it to have, not including a budget shortfall estimate in that language. The other one telling voters that this is going to cost local governments quite a bit if this were to pass. When you use the language that the state would have preferred, even then it barely goes over the 60 percent mark. We had 61 percent in our poll. That's within the margin of error. That's still easily from that prediction. It could fail even with the language staying the way it was.

[00:17:25] As soon as you tell people what it actually costs, the budget impact, it, to put it lightly, goes down in flames. Forty five percent is the new number as soon as you tell people about that budget shortfall. That's a 16 percent shift. And again, if this was even an election, we just need to clear a simple majority that would put it in big trouble to get up to 60 percent. It's Herculean. And I do not think with the language, including a budget estimate, it has any chance of passing. OK, the elimination issue, of course, was Governor DeSantis's original idea.

[00:17:52] It was his brainchild. But after the legislature put it on the November ballot, DeSantis has now walked away from it. This was reported that the governor was unhappy and disappointed that the legislature did not totally eliminate all ad valorem taxes, which is what he wanted to do, including school taxes, which was carved out of this. And thus far, except for City Council President Nick Howland, not many folks have come out publicly to support this issue.

[00:18:17] He said publicly he was going to vote for it. On the other side, opposition seems to be growing. There is another important news story that broke today as well, and that's both the police association and fire association. Both came out against this proposal, even though both of their areas were exempt from losing any possible money if it passed.

[00:18:40] So I thought that was kind of interesting. But if the governor sits on the sidelines and the amendment fails to gain this strong leadership and funding, is that going to just further kill this issue? Yeah, I don't think that he has the power really to if the language does include the budget impact. Even him going as full throated as possible, I don't think would put it above 60 percent.

[00:19:02] We've seen in the past in the 2024 election when he put a really strong message out in the last several weeks before the election on marijuana, on abortion, that that didn't hit the 60 percent threshold. When some polling, some of the polling coming out of our lab was suggesting it could be very close, but it could go over that threshold. The Santis, by speaking out in favor of things, he's in our most recent poll. He's still well above water in terms of his approval rating statewide. He's a popular enough figure that he could probably move some people in that direction.

[00:19:27] But I think there's a reason why we haven't heard his voice and he doesn't want to attach himself to a losing issue. I'll add to the interest groups you mentioned. I recently moderated a forum for the St. John's County Commissioners race a few weeks ago. We wanted to know what they thought about this. And so one of the questions I asked was simple. Just raise your hand if you plan on voting for this property tax amendment of seven Republicans sitting in the room. One hand went up and for a Republican led measure, ostensibly.

[00:19:55] I could tell you right then I did not think this thing was going to pass. Before I ask my question about the governor's race, I wonder myself if my understanding is that the attorney general is supposed to rewrite the language now. I don't have confidence that he's going to be able to do it or has the moral courage to do what needs to be done. And I'm wondering if that will sideline the whole thing before. Will it have to have to approve it again? Does he have to go back to the judge and say, now, how do you like it?

[00:20:25] Or can it because it's going automatically on the ballot? This is where I pull my I am not a lawyer card, so I'm not going to say with complete certainty how this goes. My understanding is the attorney general now has 10 days to rewrite it because this news especially just broke. I'm not exactly sure what the stipulation is of process, but I would say I would also share those concerns. I could imagine that the attorney general would try and find the next lightest way to mention the budget impact. But I do think that the problem for them is that this has already become the talking issue here over the next few months.

[00:20:55] Let's say that he rewrites it in the most minimalistic way possible. If I was spending a lot of money and now you had a lot of interest groups that are probably going to be donating to the no campaign. Now, this is not just a budget impact issue. This is going to turn into one of those. Is this corruption? Is this state politicians playing with weasel words? And that's even something further that voters who are already in an anti incumbent mood are going to be very skeptical of that language. So I think to a certain extent, the process almost could become the storyline if they don't get careful with their wording.

[00:21:24] He's up for reelection this year. So if you're and the Democrat is looking for a hook. And so if he doesn't write this correctly, you're going to the problem there is re-election. The attorney general who's got to write it. Oh, OK. I'm sorry. I was thinking you was talking about the governor. No, the attorney general. General. Yeah. Yeah. So if he doesn't write it, he's just handed one with the people knowing how they vote about it. He's at this point.

[00:21:52] He's he's crapshoot if he's really right politically. He's feeding the opposition. Absolutely. My senses. He's probably reading the same polls everybody else's. Of course. I got to do it. But he's there. Let's go to the governor's race now, which will obviously be the focus of the November election. And Republican Byron Donalds and David Jolly, Democrat David Jolly, are expected to be the candidates in the general election.

[00:22:19] Your polls show Donalds at 46 percent and Jolly at 41 percent. I want to know first, did that outcome surprise you? And can you see a path where Jolly could actually win the election? It surprised me when we first did this back in February. I thought maybe this is an outlier poll. Maybe things aren't that close. And then we did it again this time and we got almost the exact same numbers. I'm in the process of no longer being surprised that we might have a somewhat competitors, competitive governors race here. But he's within stabbing distance.

[00:22:47] And going back to what I said about the process of how we conduct our polling and the methodology, he is Donalds is theoretically above Jolly by five with Republicans at a plus 12 percent turnout rate. Now, again, I think that's spotting them a little bit too much if it's something closer to an eight percent or a six percent turnout advantage. I think we have very competitive race here and it's not going to be plus five. It's going to be plus two or something like that. It's going to be within the margin of error. If you go back to 2022 where DeSantis just overwhelmingly wins, it's not even close.

[00:23:17] This is a very different environment. And it goes to show how much I think, again, national politics plays. If you have low approval ratings for an incumbent party, this is a coattails go all the way down the line and makes it a very difficult environment for Republicans to win across the board. Now, I think that there's a bunch of factors there that, you know, Donalds has a money advantage. Donalds has not needed to press that money advantage.

[00:23:41] I think his campaign has been smart to ignore the Republican primary effectively because any polls that we didn't even bother asking the Republican primary, we were convinced from our 30, 40 point lead that we found for him back in February that this is Donald's to lose. And the other candidates in that, I think they'll be lucky to split about 10 percent each with each other. So Donalds hasn't had to spend any money yet, which means that he's got a war chest. And meanwhile, Jolly running more from the middle of his party, he might have a difficult time raising money from the base of that party.

[00:24:06] I think some of the establishment Democrats can hand him money, but he might have a harder time raising that money. So to extent that money in advertising matters, which it does somewhat, I think that Donalds has an advantage there. So that could shift the numbers back in his direction. But then again, I think there's also some things Jolly could do in terms of messaging that would put him back on footing. So I think we have a very competitive race coming up. One postscript, if I may, on that. I don't know if you've seen the latest ad that Byron Donalds came out with. He's doing it with his three boys, and he's on a basketball court.

[00:24:36] And he just makes his message, turns around, and makes the basket. My question was, as I watched that, how many takes did it take for you to have to do such a cynic? I was just trying to figure out how many I would have had to take in order to make that basket. It was a good effective ad. I have to give him credit. I'll give you credit. I'll give you credit. All right. He's 30 years younger than you, Miller. Just 30? Just 30. Okay.

[00:25:04] I'm going to put you on the spot since you've done this. Your predecessor. Your buddy. Your buddy. Sat in that chair a couple, about a year or so ago, maybe two years ago. All right. Heard what you just said. Your predecessor, Dr. Bender, sat there, and we asked him, is Florida a purple state? So I'm going to ask you the question a little differently. Is there any chance that this election, we're blue beats red in Florida? Why or why not?

[00:25:35] No is going to be my short answer there. Now, if we're talking overall state partisan politics, I agree with Dr. Bender, red state. Red state for the next decade. Red state for who knows how long. That's not changing. We're not a purple state. We won't be for a while. Who knows what happens in the future? But the governor's race, I think, is very vulnerable. In addition to what I said before, I think Donald's may have difficulty knitting back together some of the Republican coalition following this primary.

[00:26:01] Sure, you beat your opponents by 30 or 40 points, but your opponents have also gone to some pretty nasty lengths in their messaging. Particularly James Fishback has directly attacked him on any number of grounds, some of them racialized. Jay Collins has put out a pretty well-seen now advertisement against Donald's. They've ran by really pushing hard against the idea that Donald's would make a good governor. And we've seen this in many campaigns in the past for both parties. You run hard in the primary and then you try and come back together afterwards. And sometimes that works out and you don't have any bad blood anymore.

[00:26:31] Sometimes people really took your message seriously that this guy is not going to be good. And in that case, I don't think that's going to cause Republicans to necessarily be jolly voters. But it could cause Republicans, at least at the top of the ticket, to just not join in at all. So I think governor's race is vulnerable. We'll talk about the Senate race in a little bit. I think that's somewhat less vulnerable, but it's still worth watching. If you go down to the level, though, of state Senate and the legislative races, Florida is still unbelievably red. It will continue to be unbelievably red. I think I was looking through the primary races.

[00:27:00] I think there's seven competitive primaries out of 20 state Senate seats that are up. In the November election, I think that there's plausibly maybe three seats that could shift to Democrats. And even if that all three of those seats shifted to Democrats, Republicans still have an overwhelming supermajority there. So it's a red state and it takes the worst of all possible existential circumstances for Democrats, I think, to be truly competitive as they are, I think, in a couple of these statewide races in this election.

[00:27:26] By the time we get back to 2028, I would not necessarily expect that the same environment that we have right now holds, but we'll see. Okay. Very good. One other question before I ask you about the Senate race, if I may, and that is that obviously the president's numbers are well underwater. And they have not gone up at all. In fact, if anything, they've further deteriorated. Donald's is making a very big deal about being the president's candidate. Could that turn around and bite him?

[00:27:56] To a certain extent with some voters, yeah. For instance... You have to remember, too, by the way, that Jolly was a Republican and became a Democrat. So there are that moderate, there's that moderate element, I think, of the Republican Party. So this is what I think of, like, the Paul Renner voter, for instance. Actually, they could switch over to Jolly and not really feel like that they're getting that much of a big difference. Going back to Fishback, who's ran his campaign really trying to attract the attention of the youth,

[00:28:19] when we ran our sample, not recently, but back in February, we did in that poll, we found that it's a very small sample size. Normally, I'd say take that with an enormous grain of salt because of how small that sample size is. But 18 to 34-year-olds did not seem to care about the Trump endorsement because if you look at the coalition that's really shifted since 2024, a lot of those Trump voters under 35 that were instrumental of being part of the coalition that put him in, they've run away from him very quickly. Cuban voters as well. So a lot of those groups that were polling for him now are, like, very actively against him.

[00:28:49] And I think they were polling for Fishback in large numbers precisely because you would tell them about the Trump endorsement. That didn't move them at all. They did not seem to care about it one bit. So I think that Donald's has a Trump problem. I'll also mention some free campaign advertising advice to David Jolly's campaign. I would make enormous hay of the issue of AI. I think that this is something that already Donald's has been attacked by his Republican opponents on. AI is a sleeper issue in this campaign. We see some of that in our own polling. I would be talking about affordability.

[00:29:18] And then after that, I would be talking unbelievably at large margins about AI. Because, you know, Donald's position on data centers is more pro-data center than virtually any other politician in the state I can think of. And data centers are maybe the most hated object in politics. And I have not seen anything poll this low across both parties, across all sub-demographics in a really long time. So I think data centers are vulnerable and therefore Donald's is vulnerable. Okay, one question about the Senate race.

[00:29:45] The Democrat, I should say, primary for U.S. Senate between Lieutenant Colonel Vittman and Jacksonville State Representative Angie Dixon running very close. And what did the poll suggest about the primary? And can either one of them, given your poll results, defeat or even come close to Ashley Moody or incumbent? So this is where I'm most disappointed to say our poll doesn't say anything about the Democratic primary. It says a lot about what might happen should either one of them advance to the general.

[00:30:11] We really wanted to get numbers on Nixon-Vittman, who's going to win in that one. It's expensive to drop an entirely new sample as we would for Democratic likely primary voters, which is why we didn't do it. But that said... Weren't enough people to talk to us. Yes, that's part of it. Harder to reach for the primary, for sure. The D's can't afford cell phones. We do, but they're all burners. What?

[00:30:38] I went looking to see hopefully some other firm out there had done a Nixon versus Vittman poll. We are operating in the dark on this one. I have to go back to sort of political science fundamentals. What do I think is going to happen? I think this is the most interesting race in the primary. I'm going to be sitting here in a couple of weeks looking at primary results. It's going to be the first and last one that I check in terms of my own interest. On one hand, Vittman has establishment backing. Vittman has money.

[00:31:01] And Vittman, well, Vittman says that he has name recognition, but we asked directly on name recognition back in our February poll and we found he does not have much of a name recognition advantage, especially when Nixon has been active, particularly in Northeast Florida. On the other hand, Nixon, she's one that will excite the base, as we've seen in a few other states. Not someone within the Democratic Party, but we said Democratic Socialists win in a couple of these races in at least the primaries. It seems to be beneficial to be running to the left right now.

[00:31:27] That's especially true if you want to attract supportive youth, somewhat those with higher education. So I think I see two different sets of fundamentals pushing against each other there. Nixon, Vittman, I think it's going to be close. I would not be surprised if either one of them won. I would be surprised if one of them won by a large margin. So I think it'll be a close race from our own poll in the general. It interestingly doesn't seem to really affect things that much.

[00:31:52] I think that if that perception is out there that it doesn't affect things much, I think that hurts Vittman more than Nixon. Vittman has really been campaigning in part on his electability relative to Nixon. But in our own poll, it's within the margin of error. She only has two points higher than him. But Vittman we have losing by 10 to Ashley Moody. Nixon we have losing by 8. So at the very least, I don't think Vittman using our poll numbers can claim that he's the electability candidate. They both seem about as likely as each other to be electable. Which is not very... Which is not...

[00:32:20] Not just saying anything. Sorry about that. The distance between a five-point loss versus an eight to ten-point loss is enormous. And again, if you kind of give that handicap of saying maybe it's not a 12% Republican turnout gap, it's a 6% turnout gap. Then all of a sudden you could start getting into cutting distance. But it's even then I would have them like losing by several points unless something really changes. And again, we're not in the general election season yet. So maybe they find messaging that really resonates with voters.

[00:32:49] Those are numbers where I'd say, you know, to quote Jim Carrey, so you're saying there's a chance. There is. There is a chance. The governor's race is very real. That's going to be competitive. That's going to be fun to watch. The Senate race, there's a chance. Okay. Sean, thank you so very much for joining us here. This has just been a fascinating conversation. And it always is when you're with us. So I appreciate it. Come back again. Thank you. Meanwhile, the Florida primary, of course, is going to be on Tuesday, August the 18th. The three mics urge you to vote no matter who it is that you're going to vote for.

[00:33:19] Just get out there and be a part of the process. If you're not part of the process, you have no right to complain. That's my thought anyhow. Thank you all for joining us. We'll see you again in two weeks. David Bauerlein will be joining us in two weeks. We're going to dive deeply into the Jacksonville budget. So we hope you'll be with us for that. Meantime, on behalf of our sponsors, thank you so very much for joining us. And thank you sponsors for keeping the lights on and the cameras rolling. We'll see you again soon. Y'all take care. Thanks.

[00:33:47] Mike's on Mike with Mike Tolbert, Mike Hightower, and Mike Miller can be found on your favorite podcasting platform, Facebook and YouTube. Visit the website at Mike's on Mike dot com. Join us next time for more conversation with Mike's on Mike.