JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab asked registered Republicans who’d they favor to be the state’s next governor. The 2026 primary for the seat is a year-and-a-half away, but Florida’s First Lady leads the pack of potential candidates, according to the UNF poll released Tuesday morning.
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The field of speculative candidates in the poll included former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, DeSantis, and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson.
Of the respondents in the poll, 57 percent of registered Republicans said they had a “favorable” opinion of DeSantis. The overall opinion of her was 30 percent favorable, 22 percent unfavorable, and 33 percent had never heard of her, the poll states.
Among the registered Republicans, Moody had 35 percent favorability, Gaetz had 33 percent, Donalds, 27 percent and Simpson, 7 percent, the poll states.
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“Casey DeSantis was the top early pick for potential Republican primary candidates when we asked back in late 2023, albeit with only 22 percent support,” said UNF Political Science Professor Michael Binder. “She likely enjoys some favorability by association as Florida’s first lady, but most of these potential candidates suffer from a lack of recognition--some suffering more than others. That said, I expect we’ll see a few of them become household names by the time the August 2026 primary rolls around.”
Multiple media outlets were reporting an NBC News report earlier this month stating that DeSantis was considering a run for governor following her husbands second term. However, Gov. Ron DeSantis said she wasn’t last week during an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham.
“People have been asking her to do this for so long,” Gov. DeSantis told Ingraham. “She’s a force of nature. It’s not something that she’s seeking out. A lot of people are just concerned about the future of the state,” he said.
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UNF POLL METHODOLOGY
The UNF PORL Florida Statewide Survey consists of 871 active registered Florida voters, and was conducted from February 5 through February 14, 2025, by the Public Opinion Research Lab (PORL) at the University of North Florida. The sampling frame, consisting of landline and cell phone numbers, was sourced from the January 2025 update of the Florida voter file. To ensure a representative sample, the 10 Florida designated media market areas (DMAs) were stratified into 11 different strata, with the highly urban Miami-Dade County separated into its own stratum. A random sample of registered voters were contacted by live callers via telephone between 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. Monday through Sunday, with up to 5 callbacks attempted. Data collection took place at the PORL facility with its 27-station Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) system. A single interviewer, through hand dialing, asked for the listed voter by name. If they reached the wrong person, or the named voter was not available, the interview was terminated. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The response rate of this study was 3.5% using the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Response Rate 3 (RR3) calculation
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