The partisan divide over the Super Bowl halftime show is affecting Floridians’ viewing plans.
A poll released Friday found that 68% of Florida registered voters said they would watch the Super Bowl on Sunday.
The survey comes from the Public Opinion Research Lab and Sport Impact Jax, both programs at the University of North Florida.
Plans to watch are high across political groups: 75% of Democrats, 65% of Republicans and 63% of independents said they’d watch.
There’s a significant partisan divide over the halftime show, which has generated complaints from the political right since the NFL announced that Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny would headline.
Among the people who said they’d watch the game, slightly more than two-thirds said they would watch the halftime show.
Pollsters asked those who planned to watch if if they also “plan to watch the Super Bowl halftime show, headlined by musical artist Bad Bunny?”
Among Democrats 89% said they would watch the halftime show, as did 77% of independent voters. Just 40% of Republicans said they would watch.
Bad Bunny is a critic of President Donald Trump and his administration’s immigration enforcement. The president said the NFL’s selection of Bad Bunny to perform was a “terrible choice,” and doesn’t plan to attend.
The conservative group Turning Point USA, founded by Charlie Kirk, the activist who was killed last year, is planning its own livestreamed halftime show to compete with the Bad Bunny led program. It will be headlined by prominent Trump supporter Kid Rock.
There are also significant demographic differences in viewership for the official NFL halftime show.
— Among Black voters polled, 93% said they would watch the halftime show, as did 81% of Hispanic voters. Among white voters, 58% said they would watch.
— Women (72%) were more likely than men (63%) to say they would watch the halftime show.
— At least 80% of voters younger than 55 said they’d watch. Among voters 55 and older 54% said they would do so.
The game features the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.
“This year’s Super Bowl features two teams from blue cities in blue states, takes place in a blue city in a blue state, and features two openly anti-Trump musical acts (Bad Bunny and Green Day). Many aspects of American culture have become politically-coded, and this year the Super Bowl appears to be coded blue,” Sean Freeder, the incoming director of the university’s Public Opinion Research Lab, said in a written poll analysis.
Gambling
The survey also asked about legalized sports gambling.
The growth of sports betting has made 61% more likely to question the integrity of game outcomes, with 34% saying it hasn’t changed their view and 4% saying they were less likely to question game integrity.
An overwhelming majority (82%) agreed that “because of increased betting, I sometimes question whether player or referee decisions are influenced by gambling interests.”
Fine print
The poll of 823 Florida registered voters was conducted by the Public Opinion Research Lab at UNF in Jacksonville.
The survey used an online panel, in which voters were contacted by text messages and emails and asked to complete the survey.
The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points for the full survey of Democrats, Republicans and independents.
However, the margin of error for smaller groups, such as Republicans or Democrats or men and women, would be higher because the sample sizes are smaller.
The university described Sport Impact Jax as a research initiative that examines sports and communities.
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.