The survey follows a poll last month that showed Puerto Rican voters in Florida knew and liked Scott better than Nelson — by a 21-percentage-point margin — even though 57 percent of the sample was Democratic. | Getty Scott slightly ahead of Nelson among South Florida Hispanics, new poll finds

Gov. Rick Scott is narrowly leading Sen. Bill Nelson among South Florida Hispanic voters, according to a new poll that underscores the Democrat’s potential struggles with Latinos.

Scott’s 42 percent to 39 percent lead over Nelson among likely South Florida Hispanic voters is buoyed by strong support for the Republican governor by Cuban-American voters and relatively weak backing for the Democratic incumbent by non-Cuban Hispanic voters, according to the Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy survey conducted for Telemundo 51 in Miami. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.


Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker said the survey is bad news for a Democrat who needs solid Hispanic support statewide. Echoing criticisms from Democratic consultants and Latino activists, Coker said Nelson is to blame for not tending to this growing constituency over his three terms in office.

“It’s typical Nelson,” Coker said. “He goes to Washington and he more or less blends in for five years; you don’t hear much from him. And then comes back a year, or a year-and-a-half before the election and he starts putting his coalition together. He has been able to get away with that because he has had historically weak opponents. Not now.”

The survey follows a poll last month that showed Puerto Rican voters in Florida knew and liked Scott better than Nelson — by a 21-percentage-point margin — even though 57 percent of the sample was Democratic. Earlier in June, POLITICO first reported that Democrats were nervous about Nelson’s Latino outreach and were concerned that focus groups also showed Scott was relatively better known and liked among Orlando-area Puerto Ricans, in large part because of his welcoming of Hurricane Maria evacuees in Florida.

Nelson’s campaign has launched Spanish-language digital ads and is hiring more staff for Hispanic outreach. Meanwhile, the independently wealthy Scott is blanketing both English- and Spanish-language airwaves, including a Spanish-language ad that has run on Telemundo during the World Cup.

Coker said he couldn’t extrapolate the results of his regional poll of 1,000 Hispanic voters to the broader race statewide, but noted that recent statewide surveys show Scott leading and doesn’t believe any surveys show Nelson ahead. Still, with Florida’s history of razor-thin elections, many expect the race between Nelson and Scott to be a squeaker.

About half of the state’s 2 million Hispanic voters live in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties in Southeast Florida. Overall, Hispanics accounted for 16 percent of active registered voters in Florida in 2016.

It’s unclear exactly how many of Florida’s Hispanic voters are Cuban-American, how many are Puerto Rican and how many are Hispanics who trace their roots to other islands or countries. Still, experts estimate that about a third of Florida’s Latino voters are Cuban-American and another third are of Puerto Rican descent. The rest are from all over Latin America.

As Central Florida’s Puerto Rican community has grown, Democrats have hoped it would become a counterweight to Republican-leaning Cuban-Americans in South Florida. But Cuban-Americans in Florida tend to vote at far-higher rates than Puerto Rican or other non-Cuban American Hispanic voters.

In the Mason-Dixon survey, 54 percent of the sample was Cuban-American and 46 percent non-Cuban American Hispanic. About 35 percent of the sample was Democratic; 32 percent was Republican and 33 percent were independent.

The bottom line: Scott is about where he needs to be with Hispanic voters in South Florida and Nelson isn’t right now, according to Coker.

Among Cuban-Americans, Scott leads Nelson 58 percent to 30 percent, with 12 percent undecided. Among non-Cuban American Hispanic voters, Nelson leads Scott 50 percent to 22 percent, with 28 percent undecided.

Cuban-Americans also break with non-Cubans when it comes to supporting President Donald Trump’s immigration policy. By 52 percent to 37 percent, Cuban-Americans back Trump on immigration, but non-Cubans oppose it, 69 percent to 17 percent. Both subsets of Hispanic voters, however, support so-called sanctuary cities that protect undocumented immigrants from deportation by 54 percent to 29 percent. And by 87 percent to 4 percent, Hispanic voters in South Florida want the so-called DACA policy extended to protect young illegal immigrants from deportation. Trump is undoing the Obama-era policy.

Coker said he expects Democrats and Scott to increasingly tie the governor to Trump, who encouraged Scott to run for Senate and for whom Scott fundraised during the 2016 presidential race. Not only are many Hispanic voters turned off by Trump’s policies and rhetoric, Puerto Ricans strongly disapprove of the president for his handling of disaster relief on the island.

But, Coker said, Nelson is going to have to start doing more outreach more quickly because he has never faced an opponent like Scott.

“Nelson’s got an opponent with more money than him. He’s got an opponent with a lot of name recognition. And he’s got an opponent who’s going in and raiding his base and is so far doing OK,” Coker said. “Nelson is scrambling and playing catch-up.”