MIAMI _ Donald Trump has a slight lead over Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in Florida, a key battleground state that the president likely must win in November to be reelected, according to a new Univision poll released Monday.
The poll indicated that 48% of Florida voters would vote for Trump in a match-up with the former vice president and 45% would vote for Biden. If Sanders were the Democratic nominee, Trump's support increases slightly to 49%, compared to 42% for the Vermont senator. About 8% of Floridians remain undecided.
On Tuesday's Democratic primary race, 63% said they would vote for Biden while 25% said they would vote for Sanders.
But Trump's favorability ratings took a dive in a parallel poll of Hispanic voters, with 62% of Florida Latinos saying they disapprove of Trump's overall performance as president, compared to 38% who said they approved.
The poll was conducted between March 6 to March 12. Trump declared a national emergency for the coronavirus pandemic one day later, on March 13.
Among all voters surveyed at the time, 54% said they approved of the president's performance, while 46% said they disapproved _ a reflection of his strong standing in a state he now claims as his home and where he's campaigned constantly since 2016. (Trump's average approval rating is below 45%, according to RealClearPolitics.com.)
The poll was released a day before Florida's primary _ and those in Arizona, Ohio and Illinois _ when Biden is expected to move further ahead of Sanders. Biden has held large polling leads over Sanders in all four states, and Democratic voters around the country have said the most important quality they want in the party's eventual nominee is the ability to beat Trump.
Matt Barreto, co-founder of the nonpartisan research firm Latino Decisions, said the new numbers in Florida are "probably too low for the Democratic Party to be successful at this point," but that analysts expected support for the Democratic nominee to go up.
"What we're seeing here is that (former) Vice President Biden is actually leading among Latinos. This is one of the states, out of all the states, that he's done most outreach on," Barreto said. "That outreach mattered. We're starting to see that here ... It's certainly going to matter for the Democratic Party to be well-organized if they want to win the Latino vote."
The poll also showed that political differences remain strong, with 43% of voters polled saying they would not vote for Biden under any circumstance. That number was slightly higher for those who said they would never vote for Trump, 44%. And over half of those surveyed, 52%, said they would never vote for Sanders.
"This gives us strong evidence that if Biden were to be the nominee, it would be an extremely, extremely close election," said Claudia Rodriguez, an analyst with Latino Decisions.
The statewide poll of 1,071 registered voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. A parallel poll of 571 registered Latinos indicated a higher margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The survey was conducted over landline, cellphone and online, in English or Spanish, at the person's discretion.
Among Latinos, 40% said they would vote for Sanders in the primary, while 48% said they would vote for Biden.
Of Cuban Americans registered to vote in Florida, 59% said they would vote for Trump, while 63% of Puerto Ricans said they would vote for Biden. In a match-up between Trump and Sanders, the divisions between these two Hispanic groups was even starker: 61% of Cubans said they would vote for Trump, while 67% of Puerto Ricans said they would vote for Sanders.
But overall, 57% of Puerto Ricans viewed Biden favorably, compared to 51% who said they viewed Sanders favorably.
"Biden has a strong favorability with Puerto Ricans largely because of his name recognition and his work in the Obama administration," said Barreto, adding that former President Barack Obama's appointment of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is Puerto Rican, to the Supreme Court was widely praised in the Puerto Rican community.
Across race and ethnicity, Florida voters said the cost of health care is the most important issue that they want to see addressed by government, with 32% saying so. Other issues included: improving wages, creating more jobs and addressing border security.
