President Biden is headed to Florida next week
TALLAHASSEE - President Joe Biden will be traveling to Tampa next week.
According to the White House, President Biden will visit on Tuesday, but details of the trip have not been released.
Biden's trip to Florida comes as polls show the president continues to trail presumptive Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, in the runup to the 2024 election.
A poll released Thursday, conducted by the Florida Atlantic University Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab in collaboration with Mainstreet Research, showed Trump with 50 percent support from registered Florida voters. Biden had support from 42 percent of voters, the poll found.
A similar poll by FAU and Mainstreet in November had Trump at 49 percent and Biden at 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 a roughly 890,000 voter-registration edge over Democrats in the state, Florida Democrats believe that recent Florida Supreme Court rulings on abortion created an opening that could impact races across the ballot in November.
The court on April 1 upheld a 2022 Florida law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which triggered a 2023 law preventing abortions after six weeks. The six-week restriction is set to go into effect May 1. Justices at the same time allowed a proposal aimed at enshrining abortion rights in the Florida Constitution to be placed on the November ballot.
Democrats have seized on the rulings as a potential crack in the GOP's dominance in the state, with Biden's campaign declaring abortion "will be front and center this election cycle."
Gov. Ron DeSantis has railed against the proposed amendment, which he predicts will fall short of approval from 60 percent of voters required for passage.
"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 Parkland last month to discuss gun violence and tour Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.