\u201cIf you look at the toplines, you\u2019ll see the underlying movement is actually quite straightforward,\u201d Wolfson wrote to Florida Politics. \u201cThe most important change was that the undecided vote was cut roughly in half \u2014 from over 30% of the electorate to just 16%. That is exactly what you expect to see as a Primary gets closer. Voters begin consolidating around fewer candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wolfson pointed out that Collins\u2019 level of support had increased from 20% to 23% between the last poll and the most recent one;\u00a0Byron Donalds\u00a0rose from 36% to 40%,\u00a0Paul Renner gained three points, and\u00a0James Fishback remained at 9%.<\/p>\n
Wolfson also mentioned that the Salt Shaker Test did not take into account the survey\u2019s forced-choice question for undecided voters, which is a usual practice in campaign polling.<\/p>\n
As Wolfson pointed out, almost all political pollsters ask undecided voters during the final month or two of the campaign which candidate they tend to support since there is no \u2018Undecided\u2019 option on the ballot; if a person eventually votes, they have to pick one candidate.<\/p>\n He stated that of the undecided voters, approximately 40% tended to support Collins and 30% tended to support Donalds; when these leaners were taken into account, Collins\u2019 level of support increased to about 30% while Donalds\u2019 reached about 46%.<\/p>\n As Wolfson pointed out, the important thing isn\u2019t that one candidate suddenly emerged. Rather, it is that the race has mostly come down to two candidates. This is a trend that we observe in many competitive Primaries as Election Day draws near.<\/p>\n Wolfson cited a recent\u00a0poll by Change Research<\/a> which found Collins with 17%, as compared to 20% in the earlier survey of the campaign. He stated that the difference is within the margin of error and shows a consistent picture of the race.<\/p>\n He also mentioned that campaign polling usually differs from public polling since many companies use voter registration data and likely-voter models instead of depending only on people\u2019s self-reported intentions about voting.<\/p>\n To support his argument for the methodology, Wolfson referred to his more than two-decade experience in Republican politics and campaign research. After his 14-year career as a political consultant in Florida, he founded his own polling firm following the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, he worked in the Florida House while Marco Rubio was Speaker, has\u00a0taught campaign management<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Florida and is currently teaching in\u00a0Columbia University\u2019s Political Analytics graduate program<\/a>. His clients have been the National Republican Congressional Committee, the Republican Party of Florida, the Montana Republican Party, PAChase and Airbnb; he also mentioned that he had received the Pollie Award for Best Opinion Research.<\/p>\n Wolfson wrote that he was mentioning all of this since his reputation was the most valuable of his possessions. He did not think that any candidate, any campaign, or any sum of money was worth compromising it; if the polls showed favorable results, he would report that, and if they showed unfavorable results, he would also report that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe released the toplines and crosstabs precisely because we wanted people to evaluate the methodology and the numbers for themselves,\u201d Wolfson wrote. \u201cReasonable people can disagree about interpretations, but I hope next time you\u2019ll give the data a closer look and give it \u2018a fair shake.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pollster who\u00a0conducts surveys for Lieutenant Governor and gubernatorial candidate Jay Collins is addressing criticism of the campaign\u2019s\u00a0most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[445,147028,118083,73556,147029,28,34793,147030,32656,30,29,4833,65790,28912,5187,147031,7381,147032,147033,32373,58654,106586,2512],"class_list":["post-361088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-byron-donalds","tag-campaign-poll","tag-change-research","tag-columbia-university","tag-david-wolfson","tag-florida","tag-florida-elections","tag-florida-governor-primary","tag-florida-governor-race","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-politics","tag-florida-polling","tag-james-fishback","tag-jay-collins","tag-likely-voters","tag-paul-renner","tag-pollie-award","tag-polling-methodology","tag-republican-party-of-florida","tag-republican-primary","tag-salt-shaker-test","tag-university-of-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Becker-Print-Ads-EMPOWER_728-x-90.jpg\")
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