Senator Nelson faces tough Senate race

For the first time in his race for the US Senate, Senator Bill Nelson, D-Florida, could have a tough road to re-election ahead of him.  That’s according to a new, exclusive Florida Decides Poll.  That’s assuming the GOP Candidate for the Senate is Rep. Connie Mack, IV, who is currently far ahead of the rest of the pack.  The poll shows Mack is favored by a large margin, receiving 38 percent of the vote.  The next closest competitor, George LeMieux, comes in with only 12 percent of the vote.  Behind him is Mike McCalister with 7 percent, Adam Hasner with 4 percent and Craig Miller with only 1 percent.  Clearly, though, the August primary election is still far from the minds of most voters.  Thirty-eight percent of those polled say they’re still undecided.

When it comes to the general election, though, voters are slightly more sure of which way they’ll lean, and unless something changes, it’s likely to be a close race for the two-term incumbent, Bill Nelson.  If it were between Nelson and Mack, Nelson holds a 45 to 42 percent lead with only 13 percent undecided.  If LeMieux ends up taking the GOP nod, Nelson is a little safer, getting 48 percent to LeMieux’s 33 percent.  LeMieux briefly served as senator, replacing the retiring Mel Martinez in 2009 until Marco Rubio’s election in 2010.

The key could be name recognition.  Despite his long career in Florida politics, 12 percent of Florida voters don’t recognize [LeMieux's] name.  As for the GOP candidates, there, too, name recognition is key.  Only 19 percent were unfamiliar with Connie Mack’s name, compared to between 60 and 86 percent for the other candidates – LeMieux (60%), Adam Hasner (78%), Mike McCalister (76%) and Craig Miller (86%).

Nelson was first elected in 2000.  Prior to that, he served three terms in the Florida House and was in the US House from 1979 to 1991.  He was also a member of Florida’s Cabinet for 6 years.  Coincidentally, Nelson was elected to the Senate when Connie Mack, III, retired.  The telephone survey of 800 registered Florida voters — all likely to vote in the general election — was conducted Jan. 24-26 for the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, Bay News 9 and Central Florida News 13.  The poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, a nonpartisan, Jacksonville-based company.  The survey also included an over-sampling of 500 likely Republican primary voters for the GOP primary questions.  The margin of error overall is 3.5 percentage points. For GOP primary questions, the margin of error is 4.5 percentage points.

Read more here: http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2012/january/375099/Florida-Decides-Poll—Nelson-faces-tough-Senate-race

As GOP race reaches Fla., economy is dominant issue and Obama the main target

MIAMI — Property manager Nancy Leon knows all too well the effects of Florida’s dismal economy. People can’t pay their condominium association fees and fall behind on mortgages or rent. The condo property suffers. Then it has to cut costs, which makes the place less attractive for new residents. A vicious cycle.

“People are really struggling. We see it every day,” says Leon, a 42-year-old Republican who voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 as a symbol of hope and change but now isn’t sure the Democrat should get another term. Yet, she’s not sold on Republican front-runner Mitt Romney or his rivals. Like many other Florida residents, she can’t help but fret: “We are so knee-deep in the economic problems, so far down in the hole, who is going to get us out?”

With the Florida Republican presidential primary looming on Jan. 31 and Obama coming to the state Thursday to announce a new economic initiative, this is the grim situation in a key campaign battleground: Ten percent unemployment. Rampant home foreclosures. Nearly half the state’s homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their properties are worth.

Ten months before the election, Florida’s environment presents a stark challenge for Obama and an opportunity for the eventual Republican nominee in the nation’s largest state with a history of vacillating between choosing Republicans and Democrats in presidential contests.

Obama carried Florida in 2008 against Republican John McCain, 51 percent to 48 percent. And, for now at least, Florida voters don’t seem to be abandoning Obama in droves. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed the president and Romney, the GOP front-runner, in a near-statistical tie in the state in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup.

Reflecting the stakes for the fall even though the GOP hasn’t settled on a nominee, Republicans and Democrats alike have been busy testing lines of argument on the economy.

In a recent appearance in West Palm Beach, Romney mentioned almost nothing about Florida-specific issues such as offshore oil drilling and U.S.-Cuba relations, focusing instead on criticizing Obama and promoting his own economic plans. Campaign mailers sent to Florida Republicans echoed the strategy.

“Our economy has fallen flat. Who’s to blame?”

By Associated Press

Read more here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/as-republican-race-reaches-florida-economy-is-dominant-issue-and-obama-the-main-target/2012/01/18/gIQAbMwh8P_story.html