WMNF News poll on the costs of housing and insurance in Florida

WMNF asked Floridians who they believe is most responsible for rising home insurance, auto insurance and housing rates.

A plurality of voters believe that rising insurance rates and housing costs are due to several factors. However, there were differences of opinion across party lines as to when a voter believed a group was responsible. On the insurance question, more voters said insurance companies are responsible for rising rates. However, for those who chose government, Republicans were more likely to hold the federal government responsible while Democrats were more likely to hold state government responsible. Independent voters were also most likely to hold related industries responsible, followed by Florida state government.

Insurance

We asked 1,963 Floridians who say they'll vote in November, “When you think about who is most responsible for the rising costs of car and property insurance in Florida, do you think it's mostly individual owners, the state Is it the responsibility of the government, the federal government, insurance companies, or more than one of the above?”

A plurality (43.6%) selected more than one. Among those choosing only one, most blamed insurance companies for high costs (24.5%), followed by state government (17.3%), federal government (9.5%) and least selected individuals (5.1%) .

But, there appear to be some minor differences related to political party affiliation. Floridians who are registered with the Democratic Party are more inclined to assign responsibility to the state government (23.0%), while registered Republicans more often blame the federal government (15.0%) for rising auto and home insurance rates.

Of Florida voters without a party affiliation or registered with a party other than Democratic or Republican, 26.0% blame insurance companies, 17.9% blame the state government, 6.9% blame the federal government. and 45.4% blame more than one. Above mentioned.

Insurance Cost in Florida

According to the company Insurify, Florida has by far the highest home insurance rates in the country, Floridians pay second highest percentage of their income for auto insurance costs Between all the states. The cost of both these types of insurance is increasing.

The $209 billion insurance industry in Florida is regulated by the state. Insurance Regulation Office, Some Floridians opt to buy flood insurance through $1.3 trillion National Flood Insurance Program,

The state created Citizens Property Insurance, a home insurer of last resort for homeowners who could not find property insurance in Florida. But as of the end of February, more than 1.1 million Floridians had policies with Citizens. In February, state regulators approved three private insurance companies to accept 54,000 policies from Citizens.

Accommodation

When it comes to the rising costs of rent and mortgages in Florida, we asked Floridians who say they will vote in November, “When you think about who is most responsible for the rising costs of housing in Florida, So do you think it's mostly the responsibility of individual owners, the state government, the federal government, investment companies, or more than one of the above?”

Floridians again indicated that the cause is complex. A plurality (43.2%) selected more than one. Among those choosing only one, most blamed investment companies for high costs (21.4%), followed by state government (14.7%), federal government (12.6%) and least selected individuals (8.1%) .

Again there appear to be some minor differences related to political party affiliation. Floridians registered with the Democratic Party place responsibility at higher rates on the state government (21.7%), while registered Republicans more often blame the federal government (20.1%) for rising housing costs.

Among Florida voters without a party affiliation or registered with a party other than Democratic or Republican, 23.6% blame investment companies for rising housing costs, 13.1% blame the state government, 9.1% blame the federal government and 45.6% blame. More than one of the above.

Housing costs in Florida

Florida has the highest rate of cost-burdened renters in the country. According to an apartment inventory analysis of Census data, Florida leads the nation, with “60.3 percent of renter households burdened with their housing costs.”

As far as the cost of buying a house is concerned, National Association of Realtors© ranks Florida among least affordable states,

Politics

Earlier this month we released other results from this WMNF poll of Floridians. We found that more Florida voters said they planned to vote for Trump (47.5%) than Biden (41.6%) in November 2024, which is outside this poll's margin of error (2.2%).

We also found that Trump is the favorite of a plurality of voters in all four age groups (18 to 29, 30 to 49, 50 to 69, and 70 and up). Even younger voters in Florida, who say they will vote in November, responded that they prefer Trump (50.8% of 18 to 29 year olds) more than Biden (32.6%).

And we asked Floridians if they approve of Ron DeSantis's job as governor. 47.4% said yes, 45.2% said no and 7.4% were unsure. 78.2% of Republicans said yes and 76.8% of Democrats said no. Among voters with no party affiliation and those registered with other parties, 41.3% approve of the job DeSantis is doing, 49.0% disapprove and 9.7% are unsure.

How we did the WMNF News Poll

WMNF News hired St. Pete Polls to survey Floridians. The pollsters used registered voter lists supplied by the state of Florida through February 6, 2024. Only voters who said they planned to vote in the November general election were included. We surveyed 1,963 likely Florida general election voters from March 11-13, 2024. Voters contacted included a random sample of registered voters in Florida. The results have a margin of error of 2.2% at the 95% confidence level

The voting was a combination of an automated phone call voting system and a manual P2P SMS voting system. The results were then weighted to take into account the proportional difference between the demographics of the respondents and the demographics of the active voter population for the state of Florida. The demographic weights used were: political party, race, age, gender and media market. 80% of the respondents were through phone calls and 20% were through SMS texting.