Majority of Florida residents support requiring masks in schools

Six in 10 Florida residents support mask mandates in schools as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has banned them throughout the state, according to a Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday.

The poll, which shows the majority of respondents in Florida coming down on the side of mask mandates by a 60 percent to 36 percent margin, also demonstrated the political divide in the debate over mask mandates.

Ninety-eight percent of Democrats and 63 percent of independents surveyed said they support mask requirements in schools, whereas 72 percent of Republicans oppose the measure, the poll showed.

When asked about DeSantis’s threat to withhold the salaries of school leaders whose districts chose to enforce mask mandates, 69 percent of Florida residents said it was a bad idea, while 25 percent said it was a good idea. The numbers follow the news of Florida’s Board of Education informing two districts at the end of last week that they had 48 hours to allow parents to opt-out of local mask mandates before they lost funding. 

On the question of whether Florida’s current spike in COVID-19 cases was preventable, 61 percent of Floridians polled said they believed it was. 

The poll comes as multiple Florida school districts have defied DeSantis’s ban on mask mandates as the state experiences a surge in the virus.