Sean Freeder, PhD, PORL faculty director and associate professor of political science, described the results in the accompanying press release as “remarkable” since the Amendment 3 ballot measure has garnered so much attention.

“Even in a rhetorical environment that would otherwise prime Floridians to think heavily about property tax, nearly two in three still said property insurance was the greater concern,” Freeder said. “This sentiment was essentially uniform across partisanship and region of the state.”

Eighty percent of those surveyed said they believed their homes were at low to medium risk for severe damage in an average year. Still, 46 percent of those polled said their insurance premiums had increased 50 percent or more within the past five years while 22 percent noted their premiums had increased that much in the past year. PORL points out that premiums increased just 2 percent nationwide according to a 2024 Consumer Reports survey.  

More than half (53 percent) of Central Floridians are paying $1,000 to $2,999 for property insurance; 24 percent are paying $3,000 to $4,999.

In addition, 54 percent said they’d changed insurers at least once in the past five years, and 33 percent said they’d changed two or more times. Nearly half of those who switched said they had to do so because they’d been dropped by their carrier or because their carrier no longer  operated in Florida.

“The lack of availability of major national carriers in the Florida market is stunning and a key demonstration of the problem Florida homeowners face,” Freeder said.

Even so, 76 percent of those surveyed remain “somewhat” to “very confident” that their insurer could cover the repairs if their home was severely damaged.

Perception of the insurance market and the Legislature’s attempts to overhaul it were fairly negative as nearly 70 percent of homeowners said the insurance reforms benefitted the insurance industry while just 16 percent said that homeowners benefitted. Nine percent indicated that trial lawyers benefitted most.

When the survey results were stratified by political party, Freeder said that 1 in 10 Democrats and Independents and 1 in 4 Republicans saw improvements in the property insurance market.

"Plenty of political science research shows that perceptions of the economy are highly influenced by partisanship — the more one’s own party controls government, and therefore economic policy, the stronger the assumption that government policies are effective, and the belief that the economy is healthy,” he said. “For Republicans to break from these assumptions, and from their own’s party’s direct messaging, dissatisfaction with that aspect of policy must be very high, and very salient.”