David Jolly says the ‘entire race could come down to’ undecided Black voters

Elections admin October 13, 2026 0 Comments

David Jolly says the ‘entire race could come down to’ undecided Black voters

Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly is making a concerted effort to win over Black voters — and keep them from considering his Republican opponent Byron Donalds — in the final weeks before Election Day.

“The most important front that this entire race could come down to is the 10% of undecided Black voters in Florida right now,” Jolly told reporters in Tallahassee Monday ahead of campaign events targeted toward Black students at Florida State University and Florida A&M.

Recent polling by Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy and YouGov found that at the start of this month, a larger share of Black voters remained undecided in the governor’s race than in Florida’s Senate race.

Mason-Dixon, in a poll for NBC 6/Telemundo, found that 14% of Black voters polled were undecided about whether they’d vote for Jolly or Donalds. YouGov that number at about 11%. Both figures were significantly higher than the polled white or Hispanic voters.

On Monday, Jolly accused Donalds of distancing himself from Trump specifically to reach those key, persuadable Black voters in the final weeks of the campaign.

“His scrubbing of Donald Trump from his history is singularly about the undecided Black voter. His reinvention is singularly about the undecided Black voter,” Jolly told reporters.

Donalds’ campaign responded by pointing back at Jolly’s own party.

“Black Floridians aren’t a voting bloc for Democrats to manage. They’re voters who expect to be earned, and more of them every year are deciding the Democratic Party has taken them for granted,” Donalds’ campaign spokesperson Janiyah Thomas wrote in a statement.

Donalds has previously said that his removal of Trump references from his website’s homepage were about focusing on Florida and not evidence of daylight with the president.

But Donalds, who is Black, has been reaching out specifically to Black Democrats in recent weeks urging them leave the party that has historically relied on their support.

“Have they actually done all the things that they’ve promised? You’ve been faithful to that party; have they been faithful to you?” Donalds said during a forum last month at FAMU, a historically Black university.

READ MORE: Can Donalds convince Black voters to leave the Democratic Party, like he did?

During his own talk in FAMU’s series of candidate forums on Monday, Jolly made his own pitch to Black students, not by defending Democrats, but by encouraging students to vote for him and his running mate to lead the state into a “post-partisan moment.”

Republicans have “doubled down on the culture wars and the division, and just-keep-hating-each-other kind of philosophy,” Jolly told the partially full auditorium. “If voters elect Gwen Graham and myself, there will be an expectation for us to govern, not in a way to defend our party, but to improve the state.”

Unlike Donalds’ skeptical reception from the room at FAMU, Jolly received regular applause during his event Monday, including when he said he plans to end the state’s mandate that police agencies partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Earlier in the day, he was joined by two Black congressional leaders, former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Jim Clyburn and former Congressman Al Lawson.

While speaking with reporters, Jolly noted that Donalds becoming the first Black governor of Florida would be a historic milestone — and said he’s accepted the fact that some voters may find that to be a compelling reason to vote for Donalds.

Democratic Gainesville City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut noted that fact in her cross-party endorsement announcement for Byron Donalds last month: “I want to see a Black governor of Florida in my lifetime, and I will not apologize for saying so,” she wrote in a statement.

But in a race where Democrats already have a significant voter registration disadvantage and can only win with high turnout and votes in their favor from their base in November, Jolly is hoping that his agenda will have broader appeal.

“I don’t squabble with the reach for history. That’s not my place to do it,” he said earlier in the day. “I do squabble with the agenda and the platform, and I think Byron has a hard time justifying his candidacy to a lot of communities, including the Black community right now.”

Miami Herald Esserman Investigative Fellow Churchill Ndonwie contributed to this report.