Miami-Dade Republican primary voters support Florida Medicaid expansion, poll finds

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Miami-Dade Republican primary voters support Florida Medicaid expansion, poll finds

David Smiley

Despite GOP lawmakers’ opposition to expanding Medicaid, a recent poll has found that a clear majority of Florida voters — including Republicans in Miami-Dade County — support broadening the state’s government-run healthcare program providing coverage for low-income families.

The poll, a survey of 600 conducted last month by The Tyson Group, found that 76% of registered voters in the state support a more expansive Medicaid program, compared to 13% against. In Miami-Dade County — home to more Obamacare marketplace enrollees than any other county in the U.S. — a separate query of 100 likely Republican primary voters found support for Medicaid expansion far ahead of opposition, by a margin of 69% to 25%.

The results suggest that while Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature continues to turn down federal money to provide health coverage to more low-income Floridians, expanding Medicaid has widespread support, including among a notable group of GOP primary voters in the largest county in the state.

“What this shows is that the support that exists on the ground among everyday people means this issue isn’t going away,” said Scott Darius, executive director of Florida Voices for Health, a healthcare advocacy organization that paid for the poll. “Either legislators respond to it or the people will take up the issue themselves.”

The Affordable Care Act allows states to expand Medicaid to cover people earning less than 138% of the federal poverty line and adults without dependents, moves that would come with additional federal funding to cover more people. Florida, where Republicans have controlled the House, Senate and governor’s mansion since before the passage of the health law in March 2010, is one of a dozen states that have refused to make those changes.

More than 800,000 uninsured Floridians without health insurance would be eligible for coverage if the state would loosen the income and eligibility restrictions that currently keep them out, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report released last month. That includes more than 400,000 people who make too little money to qualify for Obamacare but too much money to be covered under Florida’s rules for Medicaid.

Part of the resistance to expanding Medicaid is the fear that Republican primary voters might react poorly. But in a memo outlining the results, pollster Ryan Tyson wrote that 56% of “very conservative voters” in the state and 70% of Miami-Dade Republican primary voters agreed with a statement that “Florida should expand Medicaid, which is the program that provides health care coverage to lower-income children, the disabled, elderly, and pregnant women.”

Support dropped among both Florida registered voters and Miami-Dade Republicans after voters polled listened to talking points for and against Medicaid expansion, but remained above a 60% threshold needed to pass a statewide referendum. A proposed 2022 Medicaid expansion ballot question is currently under review by the Florida Supreme Court.

“This is the highest-ever we’ve seen in terms of support for Medicaid expansion in the state, by far,” said Darius, who said the poll looked specifically at Miami-Dade County due to the sheer number of uninsured people and the concentration of political leadership in the county.

The poll, however, did not ask voters if they’d support a referendum to expand Medicaid, which likely would have yielded different results. Nor did Tyson, a Republican, address in his memo the possibility of a state referendum, or whether GOP lawmakers would be politically safe in a primary should they vote to expand the program.

Another caveat: The poll results for the larger, statewide sample have a margin of error of 4 percentage points. But with only 100 voters queried in Miami-Dade County, those results, while still statistically significant, are subject to a wider margin of error, at 9 percentage points. But Tyson’s private polling in Florida during the 2020 election was largely on target, and his firm accurately tracked a significant swing in Miami-Dade County toward former President Donald Trump — a development that caught many other pollsters off guard.

Miami Herald reporter Daniel Chang contributed to this report.

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