Scott Powers
The latest poll, from NBC News/Marist, has Democrats Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson both leading by five points in Florida’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races.
The new poll taken last week and released Monday morning shows Gillum, the Tallahassee Mayor, leading Republican gubernatorial nominee Ron DeSantis, a former Congressman, 50 percent to 45 percent. Counter to recent polls showing Reform Party nom Darcy Richardson siphoning away a couple points, “other” candidates accounted for less than the 1 percent of the total with most of the remainder being undecided.
The spread is identical as U.S. Sen. Nelson leads Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott in the U.S. Senate race.
As other polls have found, NBC/Marist shows Democrats running up solid leads among Florida’s registered voters who say they have already have voted. Unlike St. Pete Polls’ recent survey of the top-of-ticket races, NBC/Marist also shows Gillum and Nelson with leads, albeit slim ones, among those who say they have not yet voted but intend to vote.
Gillum leads by 22 points among independent voters, 18 points among women, 80 points among black voters, and 12 points among Hispanic voters. DeSantis leads by 15 points among white voters, nine points among men, and by 59 points among white evangelical voters.
The demographic spreads in the U.S. Senate race are similar: Nelson has a 17-point lead among independent voters, and big edges among women, voters of color and younger voters, while Scott leads by 13 points among white voters, nine points among men, and 54 points among white evangelical voters.
The poll was conducted last Tuesday through Friday of 1,038 Florida adults interviewed live by either landline or cell phone, and sorted subsets of voters and likely voters, depending on the questions. For the 595 likely voters, the margin of error was 5 percent.
In the previous NBC News/Marist survey, taken in September, Gillum led 49-41 percent and Nelson led 48-43 percent.
The RealClearPolitics polling average for the Guv. race, which includes the NBC/Marist poll, gives Gillum a 2.7 percentage point lead over DeSantis. The Senate polling average puts Nelson up 2.5 percentage points. Election forecaster FiveThirtyEight gives both Gillum and Nelson a better than 70 percent chance to snag a victory on Election Day, though the vote will be close. In the race for Governor, FiveThirtyEight doesn’t expect the winning candidate to net 51 percent of the vote.
3 comments
Ted Kruze
November 5, 2018 at 11:09 am
Clearly, all the racists appear to be Republican! That should be the death knell of the Republican party going forward.
kcm
November 5, 2018 at 1:21 pm
I’m NPA, so for me I lose tommorrow regardless. From the inside, you guys have no idea how awful your candidates look to those on the outside.
When reporting on polls, it is meaningless if you don’t include discussion of the internals. The poll sampled 2% more Democrats than Republicans, which is not onky unrealistion, it is contradicted by actual voter turn out to date. It has “independents” at 27%, which is not only significantly higher than actual turn out, it is greater than the total number of NPAs periid. Finally, 39% of its sample is under 45, 20% under 30. These people are not voting, they never do. They gush.
My guess on the “independents” breaking so high for Gillum is that it is due to the Bernie Sanders Millenial Democrats, who threw a fit in 2016 after the primary, who most are likely still registered Dems, not NPAs, but like to say they are NPA out of pique. That percentage in the poll going to Richardson are NPAs and those are actual votes.
Lastly, the poll started with Donald Trump. In Sociology, such a survey would be tossed as self biasing. The poll indicates from the start what is acceptable. You are either pro-Trump, or pro-Gillum. Trump should have been left out.
The Dems may win. In the end it won’t matter, neither DeSantis nor Gillum will commit to finishing their terms, and Gillum esp., is absolutely eyeing a WH run. Me thinks both will be in Iowa more than Florida over the next 15 months.
And anyone who thinks Scott will vote substantially different from Nelson, has never bothered to look at his actual voting record. Champion of the Masses he is not.
kcm
November 5, 2018 at 1:23 pm
apologies for the typos, I’m on my phone
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