Poll: McCollum builds his lead as Scott burns cash

TALLAHASSEE – Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary warped past the $70 million mark in campaign spending this weekend, as Attorney General Bill McCollum and Naples investor Rick Scott barnstormed into Tuesday’s primary election. But despite a nearly $50 million personal investment that has plastered Scott’s face on every channel from Fox News to Lifetime, a new poll shows Scott falling farther behind McCollum where it counts: likely voters. The Mason-Dixon poll commissioned by the Sun Sentinel and other news organizations found McCollum with 45 percent support among likely voters compared to 36 percent support for the former health care executive, with Republican Mike McAlister drawing 4 percent. The nine-point advantage among 500 GOP voters surveyed Tuesday through Thursday suggests undecided voters are breaking two-to-one for McCollum since the last Mason-Dixon poll a week earlier found him with a four-percentage point lead. The former Longwood congressman is now leading in every region of the state save for Scott’s home turf in southwest Florida. His lead in Central Florida is 44 percent support to Scott’s 35 percent. McCollum’s strongest region is Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, where he’s up 51-percent to 27-percent, with a huge advantage among Hispanic voters. GOP women are also leaning heavily toward McCollum 47 percent to 33 percent, compared to the 44-39 percent edge he has among men. Initially, Scott’s $49.9 million infusion of personal wealth worked. Scott built a double-digit lead in other polls this summer as he campaigned as a

self-proclaimed outsider “who knows how to create private-sector jobs.” Scott was still up 37 percent to 31 percent as recently as an Aug 5 Mason-Dixon poll. But that support evaporated as McCollum stepped up attacks on Scott’s business background as the ex-CEO of a company fined $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud. In an Aug 5 debate, McCollum declared “Who are you, Rick Scott?” in an oft-repeated campaign line. Scott dodged joint appearances and refused to release a deposition he gave earlier this year in another lawsuit against a health-care company he founded. Scott loaned his campaign an extra $12 million in the last week alone. Combined with the $11 million his wife’s trust has funneled into his ad-buying political fund, Scott has exhausted more than $40 million on television ads and $50 million in total. “The blunders on the ground where the biggest part of it,” Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker said. “Then there were some dumb ads in there, and all there was was ‘attack, attack, attack.’” McCollum has raised just $7.7 million in hard money — but benefited from $3.9 million in help from the state Republican Party and another $9 million in special-interest money from Walt Disney, U.S. Sugar, Florida Power & Light, Publix Supermarkets and other companies, used to buy ads. In total, McCollum and his corporate backers hurled $21 million into his primary.

Read the original post:�
Poll: McCollum builds his lead as Scott burns cash

Leave a comment

Name (required)

E-mail (required)

URI

Your Message