FL-Gov, FL-Sen: Countdown to the Primary

Public Policy Polling (8/21-22, likely voters, 7/16-18 in parens):

Rick Scott (R): 47 (43)

Bill McCollum (R): 40 (29)

Undecided: 13 (28)

(MoE: ±5.6%)

Kendrick Meek (D): 51 (28)

Jeff Greene (D): 27 (25)

Glenn Burkett (D): 5 (6)

Maurice Ferre (D): 4 (4)

Undecided: 13 (37)

(MoE: ±5.4%)

With the Sunshine State’s primaries tomorrow, three major pollsters have rolled out last-minute predictions today. For the Democratic Senate race, everyone’s in agreement, except for maybe the magnitude of the victory. However, for the Republican gubernatorial primary, there are some divergent results, and PPP seems to be the odd man out this time. Contrary to the general trend of this race lately (I don’t know if there’s ever been a clearer illustration of “peaking too early” than this graph of Pollster trendlines), they give Rick Scott a 7-point lead over Bill McCollum. It’s still an improvement for McCollum over their July numbers, where he trailed by 14.

PPP’s GOP sample gives McCollum favorables of 38/45, while Scott’s actually above water at 46/33. Did they manage to find a group of voters who somehow have avoided the last few months’ worth of attack ads about Scott’s gigantic Medicare fraud?

Quinnipiac (8/21-22, likely voters, 8/11-16 in parens):

Bill McCollum (R): 39 (44)

Rick Scott (R): 35 (35)

Undecided: 22 (19)

(MoE: ±3.5%)

Kendrick Meek (D): 39 (35)

Jeff Greene (D): 29 (28)

Maurice Ferre (D): 3 (6)

Undecided: 28 (29)

(MoE: ±3.6%)

Quinnipiac finds a small lead for McCollum (smaller than they did a week earlier, showing that McCollum’s late surge seems to have maxed out); their pool of GOP voters gives 39/37 faves to McCollum and 31/40 to Scott. Interestingly, they also find a much smaller lead for Meek than did PPP, and freakishly high undecideds (28%) for an election that’s, y’know, tomorrow, indicating how little motivation the Dem primary seems to have generated.

Mason-Dixon for Miami Herald (pdf) (8/17-19, likely voters, 8/9-11 in parens):

Bill McCollum(R): 45 (34)

Rick Scott (R): 36 (30)

Mike McAlister (R): 4 (3)

Undecided: 15 (33)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Kendrick Meek (D): 42 (40)

Jeff Greene (D): 30 (26)

Maurice Ferre (D): 4 (5)

Glenn Burkett (D): 1 (NA)

Undecided: 23 (28)

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Mason-Dixon’s numbers are a few days older than PPP’s and Quinnipiac’s; they’re pretty closely in line with Quinnipiac, although they see the biggest lead of all three for McCollum over Scott (and more momentum, compared with last week). They give McCollum 43/32 favorables, compared with 33/40 for Scott. Could this truly be the end of the line for shameless bald supervillain Scott? (The Lex Luthor comparisons have written themselves this cycle — but to me Scott’s always been the Bizarro World version of Peter Garrett, the very liberal, very earnest, very tall, very bald Australian Labor Environment Minister… who those of you who were listening to music in the 80s probably remember better as the singer for Midnight Oil.)

UPDATE: Was it worth it? Pre-primary campaign finance reports came out, and between Scott and McCollum, $70 million was spent on the GOP gubernatorial primary: $49.9 million from Scott, $21 million for McCollum (although the majority of the money spent on McCollum’s behalf was from allied outside groups). No worries: even after that spending, Scott still has a net worth of $218 million.

16 thoughts on “FL-Gov, FL-Sen: Countdown to the Primary”

  1. as per the “shady billionaire” status that you have granted him.

    Anyways, this race is a real clusterfuck. I won’t even bother to offer any thoughts on who will win either primary, especially the Republican primary. Most polls show moderate to significant blowouts for either Scott or McCollum so maybe we’ll luck out and get a recount. That would be glorious…

  2. These polling numbers are hillarious.  Did the firms give up and just draw numbers out of the Bing-o balls?

    And I forget, which of these firms just switched to an LV model.  The undecideds are freakishly high, so whichever one of these is the Likely Voter model needs to perhaps explain voters going to the ballot box to not vote specifically for a candidate.

    These undbecideds in all 3 polls are insanely high.  They all need to be thrown out when performing analysis in the future, for those of you that analyze polls.  

  3. I haven’t been this excited since the Constitution Party did their last candidate selection.

    May the worse man win and do as little damage to Crist as possible.

  4. Bill McCollum is pretty well  known so people probably have an opinion on him already. He is around 40-45% in the three polls. Scott is 35%-47% so I think it will be volatile with the undecideds possibly staying home or going with the outsider. That’s just my gut feeling.  

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