Poll: 51 percent of Florida voters disapprove of Trump

About half of voters in Florida disapprove of President Trump, posing a 2020 challenge for the president as he seeks to notch back-to-back electoral victories in the battleground state.

The poll, conducted by the Saint Leo University Polling Institute and released Tuesday, found that 51.4 percent of Florida voters last month disapproved of the president’s job performance, down from 55 percent in a similar April survey.

Trump garnered support from 45.6 percent of state voters, up from 40.4 percent in April.

In 2016, Trump narrowly won Florida, beating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by less than 2 percentage points.

Trump’s approval rating increased among both Florida respondents and nationwide voters, according to the poll. In November, 43.4 percent of U.S. voters polled said they approved of the president’s job performance, compared with 41.8 percent in April.

“Although the president’s approval rating goes up and down slightly, opinions of his job performance are by now baked into the pumpkin pie,” said Frank Orlando, director of the Saint Leo University Polling Institute, in a statement.

Support for the president splits sharply along party lines, with 85.5 percent of Republicans nationwide and 84 percent of Florida Republicans saying they support the president. Among independent voters, 39.6 percent nationwide approved Trump’s job performance, compared with 40.5 percent in Florida.

Respondents also rated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), with 68.2 percent of Florida voters saying they approved of his performance, up from 61.8 percent in April.

Florida Sens. Rick Scott (R) and Marco Rubio (R) received approval ratings of 56.8 percent and 55.4 percent, respectively, in the new poll.

The Saint Leo University Polling Institute conducted the nationwide survey among 1,000 respondents, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points. The survey of Florida voters consisted of 500 respondents and had 4.5 percentage point margin of error.

The data was collected from Nov. 13 to Nov. 18.