TAMPA, Fla. – The White House announced Thursday that President Joe Biden will visit Tampa next week. Biden will visit on Tuesday, but no details have been published.
Biden’s visit to Florida comes as polls show the president still trailing prospective Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, in the run-up to the 2024 race.
A poll issued Thursday by the Florida Atlantic University Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab in partnership with Mainstreet Research found that Trump has 50 percent support among registered Florida voters.
Read: Report: Boon In GOP Voter Registrations Is Not Only Rocking In Florida
According to the study, Biden received support from 42 percent of voters. In a similar poll conducted by FAU and Mainstreet in November, Trump had 49 percent, and Biden had 39 percent.
“Despite this very marginal improvement for Biden, it seems that Florida is going to be a safe state for Trump in this election cycle,” Kevin Wagner, co-director of FAU’s PolCom Lab and professor of political science, said in a release.
Although Republicans have an 890,000 voter-registration advantage over Democrats in the state, Florida Democrats feel that recent Florida Supreme Court judgments on abortion have created an opening that might impact elections across the ballot this November.
On April 1, the court upheld a 2022 Florida law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, prompting a 2023 law prohibiting abortions after six weeks. The six-week ban is slated to take effect on May 1. At the same time, the justices approved a plan to enshrine abortion rights in the Florida Constitution for the November vote.
Democrats have seized on the judgments as a potential crack in the GOP’s dominance in the state, with Biden’s campaign stating that abortion “will be front and center this election cycle.”
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Gov. Ron DeSantis has raged against the proposed amendment, predicting it will fail to receive the requisite 60 percent voter approval.
“I can tell you that that amendment is written very deceptively, to try to trick as many people to vote for it as possible,” DeSantis said during a bill-signing event in Hialeah Gardens on Wednesday.
Vice President Kamala Harris visited Florida last month to discuss gun violence and tour Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
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