New poll reveals Dade voters' views on Trump library deal, ending TPS and more

Claire Heddles, Miami Herald on Oct 6, 2025

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MIAMI — Rolling back deportation protections for Venezuelans and giving away Miami Dade College land to build Donald Trump’s presidential library are both wildly unpopular among local voters, according to a new poll.

Just 35% of Miami-Dade voters said they support the Trump administration’s attempts to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, according to a poll conducted last week on a wide range of local and national issues by the Miami-based firm Bendixen & Amandi.

That’s well below the 46% of surveyed voters who said they approve of Trump’s job performance.

The split was even wider among Miami-Dade Republicans: 91% said they approve of Trump’s job performance overall, compared to the 68% who said they support his push against TPS.

“Even amongst hardcore supporters of the president, there are still a series of issues where his own base and his strongest supporters are saying, ‘Those are a bridge too far,’” pollster Fernand Amandi said. “Whether on deporting those who aren’t criminals, handing over Miami Dade College land for the use of a presidential library or deporting Venezuelans with TPS.”

TPS is one of the only issues on which Miami-Dade’s congressional Republicans have been willing to publicly break with Trump, and the poll’s findings mark a splintering of support among his local base — which helped swing Miami-Dade for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in three decades last year.

The poll was released on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision Friday again allowing the Trump administration to remove protected status — which grants recipients work permits and is supposed to prevent deportations — for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States.

The issue with the broadest scope of agreement across surveyed voters, however, was that Miami Dade College should have kept the land it gave away last month to the state to be used for Trump’s presidential library.

A whopping 74% of respondents said the prime downtown property adjacent to the Freedom Tower should have stayed in the college’s hands. Less than 15% of surveyed voters agreed with the state’s decision to hand over ownership of the land to build Trump’s presidential library.

Even most Republicans — 59% — agreed that the college should have kept the land, according to the poll.

While there has been some publicized backlash on the secretive land handover, including from the college’s former president, residents have otherwise had little to no opportunity to formally weigh in on the decision. The college voted to transfer the land to the state during a special Board of Trustees meeting with no debate, and with no public confirmation of the state’s intended plans for the land.

The Bendixen & Amandi survey was conducted late last week, polling 600 Miami-Dade voters by phone and online. Of respondents, 36% were Republicans and 34% were Democrats. Amandi is currently working for Democrat David Jolly’s Florida gubernatorial campaign, but said this poll was unrelated.

The poll, which touched on a number of locally relevant topics, also found that:

•Just 40% of voters said they feel they can speak their mind on social media without fear of retaliation a few weeks after Florida lawmakers pushed to fire Floridians over posts they said “celebrated” the killing of Charlie Kirk. A larger share of Republicans said they felt free than Democrats.

•Respondents had mixed feelings toward the idea of Trump using military force to pressure Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro to step down, with 35% in support, 42% against and almost a quarter of respondents unsure. The Trump administration has ramped up its military presence in the Caribbean Sea, struck five alleged drug-running boats and killed 21 people.

•On local issues, about two-thirds of the respondents disagreed with using public funds to subsidize World Cup matches in Miami. And 54% said they approved of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s leadership — more than either Trump’s 46% or DeSantis’ 47%.