Latest polls differ in Florida governor's race

In the race for governor, one poll gives Byron Donalds an 11-point lead. Another shows the race is tied. And others have given David Jolly a 1-to-3-point lead. So which is it? And why do the polls disagree? Our political editor, Chris Patrick, is here to explain. So first, Chris, what does the average show? Well, the average of polls, you're taking them all together. It depends first on which polls are being averaged together, and then that depends on which model is doing the averaging because they choose different polls. They don't all take the same ones to include in their tally based on how they happen to grade those particular polls and figure out the average. And that's why you can differ. Now, here is the real clear politics average. For reference, this appeared to be the most accurate in the last presidential cycle when you looked at most of the states. So here it shows the average. Byron Donald's with a five point lead. That tells you that it is close, that it is competitive. having said that you don't really look at the top line number in the poll because if you do that even if it's an average more times than not you're going to be wrong so what you look for particularly at this point in the campaign is any movement that you can see and even beyond today movement near the end of the race and the final few days even three four days before when the final polls will come out the challenge there is that comparatively little polling comes out in that final week let alone the last three or four days which is why it can all be very very challenging and in a tight race and this one certainly appears to be but that based on most of the polls that movement near the end can make all the difference so how did the pollsters actually find a random sample of voters and how do we know if the poll can actually be trusted well you start with the track record of the poll but even there Ann Selzer who had one of the best reputations the entire country delivered a poll in 2024 in Iowa that just didn't deliver in 2016 Clinton would have beaten Trump Graham would have beaten Gillum Baker would have beaten Christman so you know the polls have missed more than a time or two we know that and they could miss again keep in mind we have caller id these days so you have fewer people taking calls from polling firms you have declining response rates which makes it very challenging pollsters can oversample one group over another of course landlines have largely gone away and those who still have landlines they don't reflect a cross-section of voters so you have cell phones you see here but then again most people are not going to take calls from a number they don't recognize and that means that you can opt in therefore to receiving calls or texts from a pollster well you can do that but see if it's opting in that's someone who tends to be far more partisan and connected to politics than typical voters that's no longer a random digit call and then on top of that when you're trying to weigh the race for governor well you can call cell phones but a real person has to conduct the poll if you're doing one that way and a lot of people don't like telling real people who they really like for governor we certainly saw that in the last couple of presidential races and so the pollsters use a mix of cell phones landlines and texting and then they make assumptions based on what they think the turnout will be. And so you'll see a Democratic sponsored poll that typically shows the Democrat doing better, a Republican sponsored poll showing the Republican doing better. That's because each side tends to be a little more optimistic in terms of what they think the turnout will be on election day. But at the end of the day, it's really a guessing game. So which polls are the campaigns paying the most attention to? The ones we can't see, they do their own internal polling. We'll see some of them. If it delivers a result they like, then the campaign will leak or outright release that particular poll. Look what our internal polling shows. So they're looking at many more numbers than that, though, that we don't get to see. But more than that, they're looking quite closely at what breaks, if anything, near the end. Is there a movement this way or that way? How pronounced is it to give them a better idea of where this will head down the stretch? It's going to be an interesting election night. Great, thank you. Thank you.