{"id":403730,"date":"2026-09-18T17:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T17:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/403730\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T17:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T17:04:12","slug":"poll-james-uthmeier-43-jose-javier-rodriguez-42-as-attorney-general-holds-narrow-edge-with-15-undecided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/403730\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll: James Uthmeier 43%, Jos\u00e9 Javier Rodr\u00edguez 42% as Attorney General holds narrow edge with 15% undecided"},"content":{"rendered":"

Attorney General James Uthmeier holds a narrow edge over Democrat Jos\u00e9 Javier Rodr\u00edguez, 43% to 42%, according to a new St. Pete Polls<\/a> survey conducted for Florida Politics.<\/p>\n

Before rounding, Uthmeier is ahead by 1.4 percentage points, which is inside the margin of error. Another 15% of likely General Election voters are undecided with less than seven weeks until Election Day. The question did not offer a \u201csomeone else\u201d option.<\/p>\n

The survey of 913 likely voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.<\/p>\n

Republicans hold an advantage of more than 1.5 million registered voters over Democrats in Florida, according to the Division of Elections<\/a>. The sample was weighted to match the active voter rolls: 42% Republican, 31% Democratic and 27% no party or minor party. Republicans made up 45% of respondents before weighting.<\/p>\n

The same survey had Republican Byron Donalds at 44% and Democrat David Jolly at 43% in the race for Governor<\/a>. U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody and Democrat Angie Nixon had 45% each in the U.S. Senate race.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Uthmeier holds 74% of Republicans and Rodr\u00edguez holds 80% of Democrats, with about 14% of each party undecided. Rodr\u00edguez gets 11% of Republicans and Uthmeier 6% of Democrats. Voters outside the two major parties favor Rodr\u00edguez 45% to 36%, with 19% undecided. St. Pete Polls reports its demographic breakdowns before weighting.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier was Chief of Staff to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appointed him Attorney General in early 2025 after Moody left for the Senate. This is his first campaign for the office. He has endorsements from President Donald Trump, the Florida Sheriffs Association<\/a> and the Florida Police Benevolent Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rodr\u00edguez is a labor lawyer from Miami who served in the Florida House and Senate. He was an Assistant Secretary of Labor under former President Joe Biden and has the Florida AFL-CIO\u2019s endorsement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier leads 60% to 30% with voters 70 and older and 45% to 40% with those 50 to 69. Rodr\u00edguez is ahead with voters under 50, 59% to 20% among those under 30 and 49% to 32% among those 30 to 49. About one in five voters in each of those younger groups is undecided.<\/p>\n

White voters back Uthmeier 51% to 34%. Rodr\u00edguez leads 71% to 15% with Black voters and 49% to 38% with Hispanic voters.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Men lean Uthmeier 44% to 40% and women are split at 43% each.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier leads 47% to 34% in the Tampa media market, the largest in the survey. He also leads West Palm Beach 49% to 32% and Fort Myers 46% to 36%. Rodr\u00edguez leads his home Miami market 53% to 37% and Jacksonville 42% to 37%. Orlando is close, with Rodr\u00edguez at 44% and Uthmeier at 43%. The smaller markets have too few respondents to draw conclusions.<\/p>\n

A University of North Florida poll<\/a> last October had Uthmeier ahead 45% to 36%. An internal poll for Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s campaign, reported by the Florida Phoenix<\/a> in March, had Uthmeier up 38% to 35%. Rodr\u00edguez led 43% to 40% in a Spring survey<\/a> from EDGE Communications and MDW Communications. A Change Research poll<\/a> this month had the race tied at 46%.<\/p>\n

Uthmeier had about $9.9 million on hand as of Aug. 14 between his campaign and his political committee, Friends of James Uthmeier, after raising more than $11 million<\/a>. Rodr\u00edguez had about $978,000 on hand on that date and has since passed $2 million raised.<\/p>\n

St. Pete Polls conducted the survey Sept. 15-17 for Florida Politics, using automated phone calls for 57% of responses and peer-to-peer text messages for 43%. Respondents were drawn at random from the state\u2019s registered voter file as of Aug. 11. Results were weighted by political party, race, age, gender and media market to match Florida\u2019s active voter population. Voters who said they do not plan to vote in the General Election were excluded. Of those who remained, 95% said they plan to vote in November and 5% were unsure. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ed. note: This story was drafted with assistance from AI. Editorial judgment, sourcing, and final review were performed by Peter Schorsch and the Florida Politics editorial team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attorney General James Uthmeier holds a narrow edge over Democrat Jos\u00e9 Javier Rodr\u00edguez, 43% to 42%, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-403730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403730","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=403730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}