Today's front page article written by Michael C. Bender on the Alex Sink campaign in today's St.Pete Times is absolutely must reading.
In the article, Bender includes excerpts from a memo issued Friday by Sink's pollster, Hamilton Campaigns:
"The national political mood is not to blame for how tight the race is," according to an internal campaign memo Friday from Sink's pollster, Hamilton Campaigns. "Instead, it is attributable to the over $60 million Scott has spent on television."
The memo said Sink, the state's elected chief financial officer, was up by 1 point in internal polls over Scott, a Naples businessman.
he memo said Sink, the state's elected chief financial officer, was up by 1 point in internal polls over Scott, a Naples businessman.Those internal polls also showed 70 percent of Democrats said they were "very interested" in this election, compared with 63 percent four years ago.
"Despite the spotlight by national and state media on tea party-endorsed candidate Rick Scott," according to the memo. "Democrats are more interested in this year's election than the 2006 race where Katherine Harris also brought heightened negative attention to the campaign."
During the same time, however, Republican enthusiasm has increased by 16 percentage points — more than double that of Democrats
There are a few nuggets to parse here. The first is that if Sink's own pollster says it's tied (or officially, that she's up by a point), she may actually be a few points behind, as internal polls always generally place the candidate taking the poll in a slightly more favorable position.
To say it's tied or Rick Scott is up a few points I would contend is the general consensus today, 29 days before the election. Scott has staying power, and will continue to up to November 2, because as the memo states, he's going to continue to spend millions of dollars.
That factor is the biggest one – not the anti Democratic mood in Florida – that could bring about Sink's downfall. It obviously contributed greatly to Scott's 3% point victory over Bill McCollum in August, and since television ads are the number one way in which statewide candidates in Florida campaign and how many voters (sadly) get their information , they have a huge impact.
Now whether those ads are completely accurate is a completely different story. That's why it's a benefit to the voter who has a few minutes to spend every day to go online and do some research. That's also why PolitiFact from the St. Pete Times is such an invaluable service to the voter.
A fascinating detail in the memo is how Democratic enthusiasm for Sink is up compared to four years ago when Jim Davis was taking on Charlie Crist for governor. But how GOP enthusiasm is up 16% (compared to 8% for the Dems). This is huge, and has been building up all summer long.
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2010.