Tracking Time – An update on Florida's big races
Bottom Line: Friday marked filing deadlines to determine who'd be on the primary ballots and we now have a clearer picture as a result. Let's start by taking a look at the Senate race...
Bill Nelson won't face a primary challenge. The same isn't true on the Republican side of the race, however rather than six qualified candidates as was possible a couple of weeks ago, there will only be two Republican candidates for Senate on the August primary ballot. Rocky De La Fuente and Gov. Rick Scott. Of course, Governor Rick Scott is a prohibitive favorite, but he does have an election to win before the general. That being said let's dig into where we stand head to head with Nelson and Scott.
We've had four accredited polls released since Scott jumped into the race – Rick's led in three of four. In an average of current accredited polling here's what we see:
Nelson: 44%
Scott: 46%
Undecided/third party 10%
And in advance of the GOP's Gubernatorial debate here's a look at the candidates based on current accredited polling:
Putnam: 28%
DeSantis: 18%
Devine: 3%
White: 3%
Nathan 2%
Others/Undecided: 46%
Two months out and still nearly half of Florida's Republican primary voters haven't made a decision about who to support. Tonight's debate appears to be extremely important for these candidates. There's not a long runway for them to win over support and there's an enormous amount of support to be won over.
With the Democrats race for Govenor here's what we see...
Levine: 18%
Graham: 16%
Gillum: 7%
King: 7%
McClanahan: 1%
Others/Undecided: 51%
This is clearly even more wide open with over half of Democrats still attempting to sort out the candidates. To say this race is a tossup is an understatement at this point. It figures to be an active and wild couple of months around our state.
Until next update...