Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Thoughts on Scott's win

There's a lot of roads you can go down to explain why Rick Scott beat Bill McCollum tonight- 50 million dollars is a good start- but there ultimately may be a single simple one. Scott's attacks made McCollum unpalatable to conservative voters, and you can't win a Republican primary if conservatives don't like you.

Our final poll of the race found that 48% of conservative primary voters had an unfavorable opinion of McCollum to just 37% who saw him in a positive light. Not surprisingly given those numbers our poll gave Scott a 50-39 lead over McCollum with those voters.

Moderates did like McCollum and our numbers suggest he won today with those voters but 72% of primary voters were conservatives to only 25% moderates.

As for electability the general election numbers we'll release tomorrow show Scott polling 1 point better against Alex Sink than McCollum. So at this stage it's pretty much a wash although we'll just have to see how Scott wears with the general electorate.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well in a world where your poll is right, this is good news for the Republicans I guess. Scott is a self-funder and they won't have to spend money in one of the most expensive markets in the country.

Anonymous said...

Looks like PPP was the only one to get this one right. Congrats!

Anonymous said...

Now rewrite your article from a while ago that Murkowsky is more popular than Palin in Alaska..... Murkowsky was too liberal for Alaska, and people liked her personally, support was a mile wide and an inch deep.

Chuck T said...

Anonymous said...
Well in a world where your poll is right, this is good news for the Republicans I guess. Scott is a self-funder and they won't have to spend money in one of the most expensive markets in the country.

My response:

Scott has pretty high negative numbers and the primary hurt him despite his $$. In the coming campaign he will also have to answer questions about his ethical problems--including taking the 5th 75 times in 2000. Money didn't work in the democratic primary and I'm not sure it will work in the GE with Scott. BTW, Sink has been raising money too, but not spending it in the primary so she will have a decent amount to spend too.

 
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