A survey conducted last week by St. Pete Polls shows Pat Frank leading challenger Kevin Beckner by a substantial margin heading into their Democratic primary race for the Hillsborough County Clerk of the Circuit Courts race.
Frank gets 49 percent in the survey to Beckner’s 29 percent. Another 23 percent say they are unsure who to support.
The poll was commissioned by St. Petersburg-based political strategist Barry Edwards, who is not affiliated with either campaign.
Beckner has a favorable/unfavorable ranking of 34/17 percent, with 48 percent unsure. Frank has a favorable/unfavorable ranking of 57/17 percent, with 26 percent uncertain.
Frank is running for her fourth four-year term in the office since initially being elected in 2004. Beckner is a two-term County Commissioner in Hillsborough who is term-limited out of his seat later this year.
“The only poll that really matters that takes place on election day, ” said Beckner. “I think people need to remember that Pat Frank has never been held accountable for her performance as clerk of the court. She has not been on the ballot since 2004.”
“Frank said simply that the results correlate to how she believes the campaign has been going, and said she wasn’t surprised to learn that she’s up by 20 percentage points in this poll.
This poll of 502 Florida likely Democratic Primary voters was conducted on June 7th by an automated phone call polling system and has a 4.4 percent margin of error at a 95 percent confidence level. St. Pete Polls pollster Matt Florell says the results were then weighted to account for proportional differences between the respondents’ demographics and the demographics of the active Democratic Primary voter population for Hillsborough County, Florida. The demographics used were: race, age and gender. Only those voters that voted in a primary election in 2012 or 2014 were included in the results.
