RUTHFULLY YOURS

With two weeks left to go until the 2022 midterms, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) is currently leading Democratic challenger Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) with Hispanic voters in the state.

As reported by The New York Post, the latest poll from Telemundo and LX News shows that 51 percent of Floridian Hispanics would vote for DeSantis, while 44 percent support Crist. Only 4 percent remain undecided, with another 1 percent opting to support someone else in the race.

The poll’s findings further indicate that DeSantis will likely win re-election comfortably this year. By contrast, exit polling from the 2018 gubernatorial election showed DeSantis losing the Hispanic vote by 10 points to his Democratic rival in that election, former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.

Along more specific lines, DeSantis leads Crist by 50 points among Cuban voters, a significant voter bloc in Florida, with 72 percent to Crist’s 22 percent; Crist, by contrast, leads by a smaller margin among Puerto Ricans, with 59 percent to DeSantis’ 37 percent.

The two candidates are tied among female voters, at 48 percent each, and among voters aged 49 and younger, at 47 percent each. DeSantis leads among Floridians who were born in America, with 48 percent to Crist’s 47 percent, while maintaining a much more commanding lead among Floridians who were not born in America, with 56 percent to Crist’s 40 percent.

Perhaps most importantly, DeSantis also decisively leads his challenger among independent voters, with 56 percent to Crist’s 34 percent. Most aggregates of mainstream polls have DeSantis leading Crist in the general election by anywhere from 7 points to 10 points, which would mark the biggest Florida landslide in modern history.

Crist, although now running as a Democrat, had previously been a Republican when he served as a Florida state senator, State Education Commissioner, State Attorney General, and one term as Governor himself after being elected in 2006. He then switched to an independent before mounting an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2010, losing to Marco Rubio but coming in second ahead of that year’s Democratic nominee. He then switched to the Democratic Party and ran again for Governor in 2014, losing to Rick Scott, before finally winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016. He resigned from his House seat earlier this year to focus entirely on his gubernatorial campaign against DeSantis.

Since DeSantis’ narrow victory in 2018, he has since become one of the most popular governors in the country, signing numerous laws and executive orders addressing such issues as immigration, school safety, cultural indoctrination in education, and other issues that have made him widely popular with the Republican base. He is seen as a top contender for the party’s presidential nomination in the near future, and it is generally believed that, if former President Donald Trump were to not run in 2024, then DeSantis would be the next frontrunner.