Florida early exit polls showed that four times as many conservative or moderate voters voted in the 2020 election as liberals.
The exit polls were conducted by Edison Research for the National Election Pool and compiled by the New York Times. According to the results of the early exit polls, about 20 percent of the respondents identified themselves as rather liberal on political issues, while 43 percent said they tended to be rather moderate and 38 percent rather conservative.
Each voter surveyed was also asked whether they identified themselves as Democrats, Independents or Republicans. The results of this question were much closer together, although the voters who identified themselves as Republicans were still in the lead with 37 percent. 30 percent of voters indicated that they identified themselves as Democrats, and another 33 percent identified themselves either as Independents or as part of another voting bloc.
The pollsters also asked voters about the issues they identified as the most important in the presidential campaign, the qualities they were looking for in a candidate, and whether they believed that President Donald Trump or the Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, would cope better with the economy and the coronavirus pandemic.
The early exit polls showed that Floridians gave priority to the economy over racial equality, the pandemic, health care and crime. 53 percent said they believed Trump would be better at managing the economy than Biden. However, Biden had a narrow 1 percent lead over Trump as the candidate voters believed would have better control of the pandemic, and a majority of voters also told pollsters that they believed it was important to curb COVID-19 proliferation quickly, even if efforts to contain the pandemic would have a temporary economic impact.
Some 33 percent of voters also told the pollsters that they preferred a strong leader to a leader who could unite the country, with the latter being offered by the pollsters as a quality that only 19 percent of respondents said was most important to them.
On the question of the candidates’ personality, 55 percent of respondents said they did not believe Trump had the right temperament to hold executive office, but 55 percent of voters said they believed Biden did. Nevertheless, about 54 percent of respondents said they approved of Trump’s leadership during his first term, although the same percentage of voters also said they had an unfavorable opinion of him.
Florida is one of the six most important swing states whose victory Trump and Biden are fighting for in the race for the presidency. Trump won the state in 2016 with about 1.2 points, although the average state polls calculated by FiveThirtyEight before election day indicated that Biden had a narrow lead of 2.5 points over the president.
Washington Newsday asked Edison Research for further comments, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
