Voting has already begun in the Tampa mayoral election. A record amount of absentee ballots has been requested for this municipal election, and on Saturday, the first day of early voting, 821 Tampa voters cast a ballot.
Over the weekend the entire political class in Tampa was poised for the first major poll conducted on the election, published Sunday in the St. Pete Times and conducted in conjunction with Bay News 9.
It showed, well, not much movement since the only major poll conducted before the campaign began in earnest — that Dick Greco and Rose Ferlita are the front-runners to get into the March 22 run-off election. The official breakdown (conducted by Braun Research) has Greco at 24%, Ferlita in a near statistical tie at 20%, Bob Buckhorn at 14%, Ed Turanchik at 8%, and Thomas Scott at 4%.
(A Logos poll taken in November had Greco at 23%, Ferlita at 19%, Buckhorn & Turanchik at 6%, and Thomas Scott at 5%. It included Jim Davis in the survey before the former Congressman announced he would not run — he got 12% in that survey).
We spoke with several Ed Turanchik supporters yesterday at the campaign forum held at USF. They were strongly in denial about the poll results, believing that their candidate is growing in support, something we believe is also accurate.
That's why the Turanchik/Buckhorn/Scott camps all should take solace in the fact that 30% have not made up their minds about the race just yet. Anecdotally, that figure sounds right to us, as we've spent time in the past week trying to speak with as many undecided voters as possible (including a Bright House technician who visited my home Saturday morning and was subject to my inquiries about his level of interest in the race — he says he'll vote, incidentally, but hasn't picked a candidate yet).
This article appears in Feb 17-23, 2011.