A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll was published Tuesday night, and it contains all sorts of interesting morsels to digest.
For Democrats, perhaps the best news is that the survey shows that the GOP holds a 46%-43% lead when the public is asked which party they would prefer to control Congress next year – that's down from a 9% lead for Republicans a months ago.
But the lede here is that the tea party has emerged as a major factor within the Republican party, with 71% of Republicans now describing themselves as tea-party supporters.
This is a prime reason why, despite his extensive baggage, Rick Scott continues to hang around and could still become the next Governor of Florida.
Polls released last week showed the former health care executive up 6% over Alex Sink in one survey, and trailing the CFO by 7% in another. Though I've already gone on record as saying that Sink will become the next chief executive of Florida, the fact is there's a whole lot of negative ads that can affect this election 34 days out.
Even though he's never been called a "Tea Party" candidate per se, let's face it: in any other election year, Rick Scott would not be a serious player.
But with new polls now showing former WWE executive Linda McMahon in a virtual tie with Democrat Richard Blumenthal in a Senate race in Connecticut, and Carl Paladino getting as close to Andrew Cuomo in the race for Governor in New York, anything is possible this year when it comes to relatively wild, far right candidates winning political office.
This article appears in Sep 23-29, 2010.