Joe Henderson
The latest poll from Quinnipiac University has Joe Biden 11 points ahead of President Donald Trump in Florida. I mention this for amusement only because we all could use a good laugh in these jittery times.
Seasoned political communications consultant Kevin Cate of CATECOMM, summed up in a single tweet what anyone who ever watched a major Florida election was thinking when that poll came out.
“A Florida landslide is any win over 1%,” he wrote. “We don’t have mountains here.”
He added in a separate tweet, “The only Democrat to win Florida statewide since 2012, @NikkiFried, won by 6,754 votes in 2018. And it took us 13 days after Election Day.”
How do we mistrust you, Q-poll?
Let us count the ways.
Q had Hillary Clinton ahead of Trump by 10 points in late August 2016. That prompted this ill-fated declaration from Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll: “We are starting to hear the faint rumblings of a Hillary Clinton landslide…”
Oops.
To be fair, Q had the race “too close to call” by Election Day.
In November 2018, one day before the election, Q had Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson comfortably ahead in their respective races. It gave both 7-point leads, but Floridians had other ideas. They went to the polls and elected Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott.
Obviously, Q wasn’t the only polling outfit to miss on Trump. Nearly the entire polling industry needed industrial-strength rags to wipe off the egg from their collective faces after 2016.
This time, no one is saying Biden can’t win Florida. Multiple polls give him a decent-sized lead heading to the final weeks before Nov. 3.
However, I think we all know better about the 11-point margin in the Q poll. It seems like pure fantasy to anyone who has paid the slightest attention to Florida politics.
After all, just a month ago Q declared Florida was “too close to call.“
What changed?
Well, Trump had a widely panned debate performance, but that wouldn’t explain everything. Those responding to the poll were about evenly split on whether it made a difference in how they view Trump.
The President’s handling of his own COVID-19 diagnosis drew deserved criticism as well. Someone on the fence might have remembered that 210,000 Americans have died of the virus, and made their choice.
Maybe.
Like the Who once sang though, we won’t get fooled again. There are too many variables, even though estimates are that about 90% of voters have already decided who they support.
There likely will be thousands of challenges to mailed-in ballots. Florida is notorious for election snafus, and who’s to say that won’t happen again? Weather could play a part. Trump’s virus bombshell might not be the last October surprise before Nov. 3.
Republicans still have cards to play.
However, what’s the biggest reason I’m not buying Biden by 11 points?
This is Florida.
6 comments
S B ANTHONY
October 7, 2020 at 7:42 pm
Joe, this may be Florida, but it’s also 2020. History has no place in the equation.
Palmer Tom
October 7, 2020 at 7:47 pm
Quinnipiac has a lot of critics. Never rely on a single poll for anything.
Sonja Fitch
October 8, 2020 at 4:49 am
Sarcasm at its best? There is no Republican Party! There is only the goptrump cult! Desantis, Scott,Rubio, Rutherford and Byrd are so deeply imbedded in the cult not even conservatives in NorthEast Florida are buying the cult bs! VoteBlue!
Kelly In Neptune
October 8, 2020 at 1:24 pm
I am a skeptic by nature, but even in 2018 it felt like those races could go either way. Sadly, common sense dictated that Gillum and Nelson deserved to win as opposed to Desantis and Scott.
But some people don’t like common sense, and they don’t like being dictated to.
That being said, I’m cautiously optimistic that voters will recognize that Florida and America simply cannot endure another 4 years of Trump’s ineptitude, malfeasance, corruption and incompetence and vote him out.
And then hopefully in 2022, those same voters will remember the primary actors who enabled Trump so significantly and vote them out as well–people such as Desantis and Rubio, and two years thereafter, vote out Scott in 2024.
Ocean Joe
October 8, 2020 at 2:14 pm
Kelly in Neptune is correct. But Florida has become America’s trashcan. Biden can win without Florida, but Trump can’t. So even if it’s Quinnepeac (which is always skewed towards Dems), it’s good news for the country. A state that could elect a character with the Marianna Trench level morals of Rick Scott could easily vote Trump again. Our old Republican leadership: Bush and Rubio, warned that Trump would rule by “chaos” and was “dangerously unprepared” for the job.
The latest temper tantrum: no debate (a win for America), no stimulus until after the election (a major step toward the second Republican led depression) to go with W’s Great Recession. (See that is what predictably happens every time they loot the treasury to give the 1% a monster tax break) Let’s get off the crazy train on November 3.
Tom
October 11, 2020 at 2:52 pm
Don’t trust the polls, and don’t trust Trump-Republicans to honor the choices made by voters. But vote anyway, vote Blue, and let’s see if the will of the people is challenged by the Trumpsters here in Florida.
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