ORLANDO, FLA. — A majority of Florida voters say they approve of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) job combating the coronavirus outbreak in the state, according to a new poll released from the University of North Florida on Monday.
Fifty-one percent of respondents said they approved of DeSantis’s job combating the virus in the state, while 46 percent said they disapproved of the governor’s efforts.
Fifty-five percent of voters in the state said the trusted DeSantis’s information about the virus, while 41 percent said they did not trust the governor’s information.
DeSantis continued to poll well with members of his own party, with 76 percent of Republicans in the state saying they approved of the governor’s response to the crisis, while 29 percent of Democrats said they approved.
The governor received backlash last month after he was slow to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, in addition to not closing beaches as spring breakers flocked to the state at the start of the outbreak.
DeSantis issued a stay-at-home order last week after Surgeon General Jerome Adams, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said that national coronavirus guidelines should be interpreted as a national stay-at-home order.
There were 12,350 positive coronavirus cases in the state as of Monday, according to the Florida Department of Health, with the majority of cases in the southern portion of the state.
The UNF poll found that 79 percent of Florida voters said they were concerned about “personally contracting the virus.”
The survey was conducted and sponsored by the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida from March 31 to April 4 among 3,244 registered Florida voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.