Poll: Overwhelmingly, Florida voters want to expand Medicaid coverage

On Wednesday, Democrats and the Andrew Gillum gubernatorial campaign held campaign events in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Orlando to tout Gillum's goal of expanding Medicaid coverage and criticize Republican Ron DeSantis for offering no health care proposals.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson today will meet with Floridians with pre-existing conditions in Orlando. He wants to highlight the threat to many of those Floridians' health coverage  from Republicans in the U.S. Senate wanting to repeal the Affordable Care Act and how Republican challenger Rick Scott began his political career campaigning against the Affordable Care Act.

And if you wonder about the constant health care talk from Democratic candidates this year, a newly released national Kaiser Health Tracking Poll that included an oversampling of Floridians shows why.

Some highlights from the well-regarded survey:

**59 percent of Floridians want to expand Medicaid to cover more low-income people, and 34 percent want to keep it as it is today.

**44 percent of registered voters said they would be more likely to support a candidate who will protect the Affordable Care Act, and 38 percent said they would be more likely to back a candidate wanting to repeal it.

**43 percent of Florida voters support passing a national health plan — "Medicare-for-all" — and 33 percent oppose it.

**69 percent would be more likely to support a candidate who wants to maintain protections for pre-existing conditions, and 55 percent of residents said they had a family member with a pre-existing condition.

The Sept. 19 to Oct. 2 survey of 599 Florida residents (margin of error +/- 5 percent) and 522 registered Florida voters (MoE +/- 6 percent) was conducted by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The survey found 48 percent of the registered voters surveyed prefer Bill Nelson for U.S. Senate, and 45 percent Rick Scott. Andrew Gillum drew 48 percent support, and Ron DeSantis 40 percent.

Keep in mind, the poll was concluded more than two weeks ago, so those head-to-head numbers mean very little.