Businessman Donald Trump has been surging in polls at the state and national levels and a new one shows him leading in Florida, the home turf of Republican primary rivals former Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
St. Pete Polls released a survey on behalf of Saint Petersblog on Wednesday which shows Trump in the lead in the Sunshine State with 26 percent. Bush places second with 20 percent. Most polls at this early stage in the process have shown Bush with a solid lead in Florida.
Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., places third with 12 percent followed by Rubio with 10 percent.
The rest of the field stands in single digits. Dr. Ben Carson, who moved to South Florida after ending his celebrated medical career, pulls 5 percent. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Gov. John Kasich pull 4 percent each. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., garners 3 percent.
Other Republican presidential hopefuls and undecided voters make up 16 percent of the total surveyed.
The poll finds Bush leading Trump with voters under the age of 30 but the businessman and reality TV star beats the former governor among all other voters.
Trump has a commanding lead over Bush in some of the key TV markets in the state, including Orlando and Tampa, but he has a smaller lead in Miami, Fort Myers, Pensacola and Jacksonville. Bush is ahead in Tallahassee and Gainesville and runs even with Trump in Panama City.
The poll of 1,902 Florida Republicans was taken from July 18-28 and had a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percent.
“The poll was conducted through a Web-based email polling system,” St. Pete Polls noted. “The results were then weighted to account for proportional differences between the respondents' demographics and the demographics of the active Republican primary election voter population for the state of Florida. The weighting demographics used were: race, age, gender and media market. The voters polled were chosen at random within the registered voter population within the state of Florida. The random sample used was made up of a sampling of registered Republican Party voters from the state of Florida.”
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN
