Why Florida property insurance is the key issue in governor’s election

Skyrocketing property insurance cost is now the issue du jour in the Florida gubernatorial election with the candidates sparring over how to solve Florida’s broken system and a new poll showing it a top concern of homeowners.

The statewide survey of 1,511 homeowners found they prioritized property insurance crisis over property taxes. The Republican Legislature put Amendment 3 on the ballot that would increase exemptions on homestead properties to $250,000 in the next two years but it has faced strong headwinds as municipalities say it would mean eliminating essential services.

“This is remarkable given the amount of attention that has been spent this year discussing property tax reform, especially with Amendment 3 on the ballot,” said Dr. Sean Freeder, UNF Public Opinion Research Lab (PORL) Faculty Director and Associate Professor of Political Science. “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.”

Republican Byron Donalds unleashed his newest campaign ad in late September, claiming opponent David Jolly’s position to create a new statewide catastrophic fund would cost households $1,000. “Jolly’s hurricane tax is so massive it will hit you hard even if the hurricane doesn’t,” the ad’s ominous voiceover states.

“It’s fundamentally a lie,” Jolly said of the ad. “He is citing a study from Florida State University that wasn’t comparing my model. It wasn’t evaluating my model.”

The ad has been fact-checked by PolitiFact and media outlets with the conclusion that the property insurance problem hardly can be solved in vitriol and soundbites. Jolly proposes to take hurricane and wind risk out of homeowner’s insurance bill and create a state-back hurricane fund that he says would cut bills up to 70%.

“David Jolly wants government to take over hurricane insurance,” the Donalds ad said.

Donalds touts his “Bring Down The Bill,” which focuses on insurer transparency, hurricane-disaster financing, tort reform and making homes more resilient. He advocates for transferring polices from Citizens Property Insurance Corp., Florida’s state-backed insurer of last resort back to the private market.

Jolly says Donalds is just trying to preserve the current system to protect insurers. He said his Republican opponent has received more than $1 million in campaign donations from insurance industry.

The Donalds campaign cites a Florida State University study that looked at what would happen if Citizens took over wind coverage. Floridians would pay fees for a limited time if a catastrophic storm wiped out the reserve funds, FSU found.

Jolly says his opponent’s latest attack is projection. “That’s the existing law that bails out Citizens if Citizens goes belly-up, that’s the existing law that Republicans support” he said. “My model replaces all of it, replaces Citizens, replaces that tax.”

Skepticism with Florida’s property insurance abounds in Florida

The statewide survey of 1,511 homeowners by PORL reveals deep skepticism regarding state-led insurance market reforms of any kind, with 81% of respondents reporting that the market is failing to improve or getting worse.

Besides saying that property insurance was a greater concern than their property taxes (63% to 36%), a strong majority (69%) of respondents believe recent state legislative reforms have primarily benefited the insurance industry rather than consumers or trial lawyers.

State Sen. Lori Berman this year said Democrats had introduced several bills to address property insurance during the last session to give relief to Floridians, who pay twice the national average. One idea was to create a compact where catastrophic insurance would be pooled with other states. “We can’t get any traction on hearing that idea,” she said.

“I am so disappointed that we haven’t discussed insurance at all in the Legislature and instead the focus has been about property taxes,” said Berman, speaking to the Beach Property Owners Association back in Delray Beach.

New polls shows many homeowners denied claims from storm damage

The PORL poll, done in partnership with the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, also discovered some disturbing trends:

• 25% of all surveyed homeowners reported being dropped by their insurance carrier in the last five years. More than half had switched insurers.
• 45% of those who had filed an insurance claim in the last fears indicated their claim was denied.
• 61% of respondents reported holding policies with insurers operating solely or primarily within Florida, most pronounced among coastal residents and owners of older homes.

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

Experts say Jolly’s plan to convert the state’s hurricane catastrophic fund – created after Hurricane Andrew – into the primary insurer for wind coverage faces some obstacles, ostensibly that would need to be funded by $32 billion.

“I just don’t know how a government fund will do this cheaper and more efficiently than a widely diversified industry,” Gabriel Carrillo, program director at the University of Central Florida’s Center for Risk Management and Insurance Education, told PolitiFact.

But Jolly said the fact that the current system is collapsing is evidence that is not the case. “I believe the private market cannot affordably cover natural disasters,” he said.

John Pacenti is the Government Impact Reporter for The USA TODAY NETWORK-FLORIDA. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY, at https://palmbeachpost.com/newsletters.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Why Florida property insurance is the key issue in governor’s election

Reporting by John Pacenti, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Florida Today

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This story was originally published September 28, 2026 at 12:30 PM.