Poll suggests GOP Florida Senate primary is Mack’s to lose

For months, none of the handful of candidates had been able to coalesce Republican support,
and GOP voters remained undecided or unimpressed. That led Democrats to
predict that Sen. Bill Nelson (Fla.), an otherwise vulnerable Democrat,
would soar to reelection over the weakness of the Republican field.

But a Quinnipiac University poll released Friday showed Mack locking up
32 percent of Republican voters, with none of the other candidates
breaking 10 percent.

{mosads}Former Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.), who led led the poll in September
with 17 percent, has dropped to just 9 percent. Retired Army Col. Mike
McCalister took second in September with 11 percent. With Mack in the
race, he now comes in third at 6 percent.

Even worse news for Nelson: He and Mack are now in a statistical dead
heat in a general-election match-up. But a major gender gap shows Mack
struggling with women, who prefer Nelson by 11 points.

“The
fact that Mack is essentially tied with Nelson, who has been a
statewide political figure for two decades, should set off warning bells
at Democratic headquarters,” wrote Peter A. Brown of the Quinnipiac
University Polling Institute.

{mosads}One glimmer of hope for Nelson, who raised almost $2 million
for his reelection between July and September, is that his approval
rating seems to be holding steady — and even increasing slightly, within
the margin of error.

Name recognition has never been a struggle for Mack, whose father
represented Florida in the Senate and whose great-grandfather was Hall
of Fame baseball manager/owner Connie Mack.

The poll also showed that Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) 49 percent
approval rating has remained unchanged from two months ago, despite
questions about whether Rubio had been misleading
in describing the timeline of his parents’ exodus from Cuba.

The poll of 1,185 Florida voters was conducted Oct. 31-Nov. 7 and had an
overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.