FAU’s final poll for the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election in Florida shows former Vice President Joe Biden with the lead over President Donald Trump, 50 percent to 48 percent.

The poll, which was conducted by FAU’s Business and Economics Polling Initiative (BEPI), surveyed 937 likely Florida voters from Oct. 24 to 25.

People within the Democratic party have Biden with the advantage of 98 percent, with 93 percent of the Republicans leaning toward Trump.

Another Florida poll that was conducted between Oct. 25 and 27 by Marist College and NBC News surveyed 743 likely voters shows Biden ahead of Trump 51-47, while RealClearPolitics has their polling average in Florida at a stalemate between the two candidates at 48 percent each.

Dr. Monica Escaleras, professor and director of FAU’s BEPI, said the poll asked two screening questions, with the first asking voters their party affiliation and the second being their intention to vote.

“Those that chose ‘not sure how I will vote’ and ‘I don’t plan to vote in this election’ were eliminated from the sample,” Dr. Escaleras said. “Thus, our sample constitutes register voters that are likely to vote.”

Similar to other polls made by FAU BEPI, three models of data collection were used to get a representative sample of Florida voters.

“Data was collected from October 24-25, 2020 using a blended model of 324 cell mobile responses, 214 online responses provided by Dynata [a global market research firm], and 399 landline respondents by Interactive Voice Response with both cell and landline samples provided by Aristotle, Inc.,” Dr. Escaleras said. “Then the data was weighted based on gender, age, education, party affiliation, and ethnicity-based on 2016 US Census Voting and Registration modeling.”

Due to Florida’s status as a battleground state, the momentum could go either way.

“It is a very close race that any movement in the upcoming week can swing the results in either candidate’s favor,” Dr. Escaleras said.

The early voting period in Florida ended Sunday, and Election Day takes place on Nov. 3.

Richard Pereira is a staff writer for the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected] or tweet him @Rich26Pereira.