Stay Woke, Inc. and Public Policy Polling say Florida voters have major justice concerns

According to two organizations, understanding public opinion helps to inform advocacy, improve messaging and prioritize organizing campaigns to address particular issues of equity and justice.

The groups used poll questions designed to assess voting behavior, trust in current public officials and to gauge public support for a range of equity and justice-related issues. To conduct this poll, Public Policy Polling interviewed 847 registered voters in Florida on October 23-24, 2018 using automated telephone interviews via landlines. The margin of error for this survey is +/- 3.4%. 

Key Findings: In most cases, more Florida voters supported the proposed constitutional amendments than opposed them. However, large numbers of Floridians remained undecided about many of these measures and few initiatives had more than the 50% support or opposition, indicating that more work would need to be done to pass these amendments with the 60% threshold required to pass a Constitutional Amendment in Florida.

1. Proposals to address police violence/accountability were the most popular with Florida voters. 52% of respondents said they would support a constitutional amendment to require police officers to exhaust all reasonable alternatives prior to using deadly force. 66% of respondents indicated they’d support an amendment to repeal part of the state’s Law Enforcement Bill of Rights law to be able to give community oversight structures the power to subpoena police officers who are under investigation for misconduct. This indicates a majority of voters are broadly supportive of policies focused on addressing police violence that have yet to be endorsed or considered by legislators in the state. There was broad support for these proposals across racial groups: White, Latino and Black respondents were all more likely to support these policing-related proposals than to oppose them. 
2. 51% of respondents indicated they would support imposing a tax on firearms ammunition to fund gun violence prevention programs, suggesting Florida voters want policymakers to take more action on gun control than has been taken to date.
3. Amendment 4 received 63% support, consistent with other polls suggesting this amendment is at or above the requisite 60% support to pass this November. However, given the 3.4% margin of error, it will be important for the 10% of undecided respondents to end up voting for the initiative to ensure that it passes.
4. Proposed constitutional amendments that had more opposition than support included proposals to enact same-day voter registration, ban private prisons, allow people with past felony convictions to run for office, and abolish the death penalty. This is the first known instance in which a statewide poll has been conducted to assess public support for a ban on private prisons or for allowing people with felony convictions to run for public office. We find, at least in Florida, that these proposals did not appear to currently enjoy broad support among registered voters. However, this may be at least partially due to unfamiliarity with the issues. For example, in addition to the 36% of respondents indicating they’d support a ban on private prisons another 24% were “not sure” whether they’d support this proposal - the highest proportion of “not sure” responses among the proposals in the poll.
5. A Medicare-for-All Single-Payer healthcare system was one of the more popular proposals tested with 47% of respondents supporting, though 70% of Trump voters were opposed to the initiative. 
6. Despite national polling suggesting broad support for voting reforms including same-day registration, a plurality of respondents in our survey opposed same-day voter registration in Florida. This opposition was driven predominantly by white respondents - majorities of Latino (54%) and black respondents (68%) supported same-day registration while 59% of white respondents opposed it. 
7. When asked which they were most excited about voting for this year, 55% of respondents indicated they were most excited about voting for Florida’s next Governor compared to 28% who chose the Senate race and 8% who chose Amendment 4. This suggests the Governor’s race may have important down-ballot (and “up-ballot”) effects on the Senate race and potentially other elections in Florida this year. Furthermore, 1 in 4 black respondents indicated they were most excited about voting for Amendment 4, suggesting this amendment could also play a role in increasing black turnout this year.
8. Overall, 87% of all respondents indicated that they voted in all or most local, state, and federal elections in their adult life. However, 18% of black respondents and 14% of Latino respondents indicated they voted in only “some”, “few” or “none” of these elections compared to only 9% of white voters.
9. When asked why they did not vote more often, black respondents were more likely (28%) to cite structural barriers (lacking ID, transportation or time-off work) as well as not believing their vote would make a difference (23%), compared to 19% and 13% of white voters respectively.
10. Respondents indicated they had similar low levels of trust in their local, state, and federal representatives: no elected representatives at the local, state, or federal levels were trusted “a lot” by a majority of respondents.

For more information, contact Stay Woke, Inc., PO Box 540717, Orlando, FL 32584 or email deray@thisisthemovement.org