Although the campaign for U.S. Senate in Florida continues to remain a relatively sleepy affair, a new Public Policy Polling survey released Tuesday shows an unmistakable trend, which is that David Jolly and Alan Grayson continue to lead in the polls.
On the GOP side, Jolly, a first-term congressman from Pinellas County, leads with 26 percent of the vote. Congressman Ron De Santis is second with 14 percent. Lieutenant Governor Carlos Lopez Cantera is third with 11 percent, and former CIA contractor Todd Wilcox is fourth with 2 percent.
However, 47 percent of all Republicans asked said they had no preference at this juncture, nearly six months before the primary election.
In the Democratic race, Orlando area Congressman Alan Grayson leads Jupiter Representative Patrick Murphy by 11 percentage points, 33%-22%. However, 45 percent of all Democrats say they don’t have a candidate yet.
All of the candidates suffer from a major lack of name recognition. Grayson, a national figure in politics since first elected in 2008, does have the highest name recognition at 47 percent, but PPP says that’s not all good, as only 16 percent view him favorably, compared to 31 percent who have an unfavorable view of him.
All of the rest of the candidate name recognition hover in the 25-31 percent range.
In a positive development for the two Democratic candidates – both Grayson and Murphy lead their Republican challengers in almost every one-on-one match-up.
“Democrats appear to have a slight initial advantage in the Florida Senate race,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But it’s hard to make too much of it at this point because the candidates are so little known.”
The one exception is a Jolly-Grayson duel. There, Jolly leads Grayson 38%-35%, with 26% undecided.
Grayson leads Lopez-Cantera, 38-35% with 26% undecided.
Grayson leads DeSantis, 40%-34%, with 26% undecided.
Patrick Murphy leads Jolly, 38%-34%, with 27% undecided.
Murphy leads Lopez-Cantera, 40%-31%, with 29% undecided.
Murphy leads DeSantis, 43%-31%, with 26% undecided.
Public Policy Polling surveyed 1,012 registered voters, including 464 likely Republican primary voters and 388 likely Democratic primary voters, on February 24th and 25th. The margin of error is +/-3.1% for the overall sample, +/-4.6% for the Republicans and +/-5.0% for the Democrats. 80% of participants, selected through a list based sample, responded via the phone, while 20% of respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the internet through an opt-in internet panel.
