Fourth poll shows CFO race as dead heat between incumbent Blaise Ingoglia, Annette Taddeo

Florida’s CFO race will come down to the wire, according to new polling showing incumbent Republican Blaise Ingoglia and Democrat Annette Taddeo in a dead heat for the job.

It’s the fourth consecutive voter questionnaire to reach that conclusion.

Commissioned by Florida Politics, St. Pete Polls surveyed voters on the CFO contest and several other races this month. Its finding: Ingoglia and Taddeo, both former state Senators, are just two percentage points apart in decided statewide voter support.

Ingoglia leads slightly with 44.3%, while Taddeo has 42% support. The difference is well within the poll’s 3.4-point margin of error.

Both candidates have more than three-quarters of their party base behind them — Ingoglia with 77.9% Republican support, compared to 79.2% for Taddeo. But Taddeo enjoys more crossovers, with 12% of registered Republicans saying they’ll vote for her, compared to 6.8% of Democrats who plan to vote for Ingoglia.

Taddeo also leads by more than 10 points with voters who belong to a third party or no party, 45.4% to 35.1%.

Ingoglia is stronger among non-Hispanic White and Asian/Pacific Islander voters, at 53.2% and 50% support, respectively, compared to 34.1% and 38.9% for Taddeo. But Taddeo leads with Black and Hispanic voters: more than 69% of Black voters plan to vote for Taddeo, compared to just 9.3% who side with Ingoglia, and the split among Hispanics is 50.4% Taddeo, 39.7% Ingoglia.

Taddeo edges Ingoglia among members of the electorate who identify as belonging to another race or ethnicity, too, with 43.9% support to Ingoglia’s 39%.

Age is also a major divider. The younger a voter is, the more likely they are to side with the challenger.

Among voters 18-29, Taddeo holds a nearly 34-point lead. She also leads voters 30-49 by 12.7 points and edges Ingoglia with voters 50-69 by 1 point.

Ingoglia, meanwhile, overwhelmingly wins with voters 70 and older — a sizable portion of an age cohort that historically has had the highest turnout rates — with double the support (62.8%) of Taddeo (31.4%).

Geographically, Taddeo holds strong advantages in media markets including Miami, Orlando, Pensacola and Tallahassee, while Ingoglia carries Gainesville, Jacksonville, Panama City, Tampa, West Palm Beach and Fort Myers.

St. Pete Polls surveyed 836 likely General Election voters by phone and text Oct. 5-7. Pollsters weighted the results, which had a 95% confidence level, to account for proportional differences between respondents’ demographics and the demographics of Florida’s active voter population.

The poll follows prior canvassing queries in September and May that yielded similar results.

San Francisco-based Change Research, through a survey conducted Sept. 7-9, found Ingoglia and Taddeo at 44% voter support each, despite a lopsided registration ledger that now shows the Florida GOP with a 1.55 million-voter advantage.

SEA Polling & Strategic Design found a tie as well, with 42% support for each candidate, in a survey the Sarasota-headquartered firm ran Sept. 7-13.

SEA compared this year’s CFO race to Florida’s 2006 CFO contest, when Democrat Alex Sink defeated Republican Tom Lee. An early October Survey USA poll that year had Lee ahead of Sink 49% to 47%, with Sink leading among no-party voters by 11 points.

Sink ultimately won by 7 points. SEA wrote that the current political climate has “erased a 13-point Republican registration advantage.”

Taddeo’s strong showing, despite Ingoglia’s incumbency advantage and a lack of broad name recognition for both candidates, had been predicted in a survey Ruth’s List Florida commissioned before she entered the race, which found she’d narrowly lead Ingoglia in a head-to-head matchup.

Ingoglia, a Spring Hill resident, was appointed CFO by Gov. Ron DeSantis in July 2025. He succeeded Republican Jimmy Patronis, who left the Office for a successful run at Congress.

Taddeo, a former Miami-Dade County Democratic Party Chair, took nearly 66% of the vote in the Aug. 18 Primary, the strongest showing of any Democrat running statewide.

She’s running at a significant funding disadvantage. Ingoglia, a past Chair of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), controlled more than $3.4 million in his campaign account and political committee on Sept. 25. He also reported more than $1 million in in-kind aid, most of it from the RPOF.

Taddeo had a comparatively meager $392,000 and reported less than $17,000 worth of in-kind assistance, about 78% of which came from the Florida Democratic Party.

Election Day is Nov. 3.