Unlikely Voter

Challenging an incumbent Senator is hard, even for an incumbent Governor. But after months of bad polling, Rick Scott could win this.

This is a new feature I’m going to start here at Unlikely Voter. When I see a few polls that aren’t really a whole post in themselves, I’ll throw a post out wrapping them all up into one post.

I’m a proponent of applying mathematical principles to poll analysis because our intuition is often wrong. The human mind deals poorly with randomness.

However I don’t feel I need any math to conclude that Connie Mack IV runs better against Bill Nelson than do other Republicans in the Florida Senate race.

Once again, the polls were pretty close. Mitt Romney’s ground game carried him to overperform. Gingrich underperformed. A 10 point advantage became 14, and Romney approached an absolute majority closer than I imagined he could.

Romney sweeps Florida’s at-large delegates and takes a 66-25 lead among pledged delegates.

It’s popular to talk down polling, but from where I sit, the polling of the primaries has been pretty good. Yes, Iowa was terrible, but that was a caucus. The primary polling has been solid.

Florida’s polling has lined up in a nice, neat band for every candidate, making it easy to say Mitt Romney is going to win tomorrow.

We were spoiled by the New Hampshire and South Carolina polling. Those states weren’t stagnant in voter opinion, but they at least moved at reasonable speeds, and allowed for a clear understanding of what was going on.

Florida is different. After swinging 20 points to Newt Gingrich, has now gone 10-15 points right back to Mitt Romney.

When word came out of InsiderAdvantage’s new Florida poll, I said to myself “I’ve heard this story before.” Newt Gingrich shooting up like a rocket, but confirmation is needed.

Rasmussen provided the confirmation.

Last week’s shock poll bringing Herman Cain into third place needed confirmation before we could be sure that Cain was a serious contender.

Two new polls of Florida Republicans by SurveyUSA for WFLA and by War Room Logistics seem to provide that confirmation and more: Both put Herman Cain in second in the key early primary state.

Quick hit to close the weekend: If the Florida Governor’s race isn’t close, as this new Sunshine State News/VSS poll shows in a 45-45 tie, then we’ll know the polls this year were out of calibration.

In particular, if Republican Rick Scott wins handily over Democrat Alex Sink, then the Democrats may have a long night.

Yes, yes, I can hear the groans from here already, but when I see two polls one day apart from each other that give diametrically opposite results in the Florida Governor’s race, I get worried.

Republican Rick Scott had similarly erratic polling in his primary race which finished close with 3% final difference, so as his polling against Democrat Alex Sink is swingy, I worry about the need for another divisive recount.

Good evening. We have a great deal of new polling that’s flooded in. Much of it is interesting too, so rather than pick and choose which polls I’ll cover in depth and which I will omit, instead I’ll give a quick look at all the good ones.

We’ve got Senate races in Nevada, Connecticut, West Virginia, Ohio, New York, Missouri, and Delaware, plus races for Governor in Illinois, Rhode Island, New York, Hawaii, and Florida. I told you it was a lot.

I am at a loss as to how to analyze the polling of the race for Governor in Florida. Of the last four polls at Real Clear Politics, Republican Rick Scott leads according to Rasmussen Reports and Ipsos for Reuters, while Democrat Alex Sink leads acccording to Mason Dixon and CNN/Time.

Two polls concluded on the same day (Rasmussen and Mason Dixon) are not supposed to have a thirteen point swing between them, predicting different winners, but they do. So what’s going on?

Opinion Research polled California, Florida, and Kentucky for CNN and Time. The results seem off from those of other recent polls. Let’s find out why.