A new St. Pete Polls survey shows Sydney Gruters with a commanding lead over the rest of the GOP field in Florida’s 16th Congressional District, as President Donald Trump‘s endorsement continues to consolidate Republican support behind her bid to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan.
Gruters pulls 49% in a three-way ballot test against Navy veteran Ed Pope at 7% and Inspiration Academy founder Eddie Speir at 13%. She’s within shouting distance of the 50% threshold that would all but lock the nomination in August, with 32% of likely Republican Primary voters still undecided.
The dominance gets sharper among the voters who actually decide August Primaries. Among Republicans 70 and older — the single largest age bloc in the sample at 44% — Gruters clears the majority mark at 51%. Senior turnout in Manatee and Sarasota counties routinely outpaces the rest of the electorate by double digits, which means Gruters isn’t just winning a demographic; she’s running away with the demographic that decides August Primaries in Southwest Florida.
Pope and Speir — the “two Eds” of the Primary — are essentially running together in the low single and low double digits, splitting the anti-establishment lane and neutralizing one another. Neither has cleared the threshold needed to mount a serious challenge to Gruters, and as long as both stay in, neither is likely to. In a newly drawn district where most voters are still meeting these candidates for the first time, sharing a first name only compounds the splitting effect.
Trump is the engine. The President carries a 74% favorable rating with CD 16 Republicans, and 79% of them say his endorsement would make at least some difference in their vote — including 50% who say it would make a “major difference.” Among voters 70 and older, that number climbs to 59%.
Gruters launched her campaign in April after Trump posted a “Complete and Total Endorsement“ on Truth Social, capped with a “RUN, SYDNEY, RUN!” send-off. She brings a deep Southwest Florida résumé to the contest: legislative aide to Buchanan, district director for U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, Trump-appointed State Director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the first administration, and most recently Executive Director of the New College Foundation in Sarasota.
She is also the wife of state Sen. Joe Gruters, who chairs the Republican National Committee (RNC). Joe Gruters has said he will support his wife only in a personal capacity, citing RNC rules requiring neutrality in Republican Primaries.
The St. Pete Polls survey, commissioned by Florida Politics, was conducted May 11-12 among 441 likely Republican Primary voters in the newly drawn CD 16, with a margin of error of 5 percentage points. The poll did not include a non-informed ballot test — because the district was redrawn this cycle, all the candidates were assumed to be in roughly the same range on name recognition, and an uninformed read would have offered little usable signal in advance of paid communications. The informed ballot test reflected Trump’s endorsement of Gruters.
CD 16 covers Manatee County and parts of Sarasota, DeSoto, Hardee, Pinellas and Polk counties.