The only time I met David Jolly face-to-face was at a Suncoast Tiger Bay debate in December 2013. A special election to fill the late Congressman Bill Young‘s seat had drawn three Republican candidates, as well as one Democrat and one Libertarian. All five declared candidates were at that day’s event, and I was able to meet with each of them. I had cordial conversations with four of the candidates. Then, I met David Jolly. I approached him as someone…
After a contentious Tuesday meeting, South Pasadena City Commissioners signaled the end of the last red-light-camera program in south Pinellas County. I am proud of my role in making that happen. About a week before voting 4 to 1 to end RLCs, the South Pasadena held a two-hour workshop, where city leaders hashed out many of the points brought up at the Feb. 9 meeting. At that meeting, David Mast, an account representative from RLC vendor American Traffic Solutions (ATS) brought Kevin…
The Gulfport City Council voted unanimously 5 to 0 to not renew the City’s red light camera contract with their vendor, American Traffic Solutions (ATS). The discussion in City Council chambers lasted for over an hour, and by the end of it, there was no shortage of reasons why the Council voted they way they did. The Council meeting started with awards, applause and a spirited discussion about an “aggressive therapy pig” that was causing problems a couple of blocks…
We’ve been running StPetePolls.org for more than four years, and while it has been a lot of fun to do, and we’ve had great success in accurately predicting the results of elections in Florida, a series of changes have led to our recent decision to scale back polling operations greatly. First and foremost, our polling has never been profitable. We do polling for the fun of it and increase awareness of political issues and elections in the state of Florida, especially in…
During the 2014 General Election season this year we polled over 40 different Florida races, some of them more than a half-dozen times. Over 20 of those races were released as public polls, and above you can see how we did at predicting the winner and the gap between the winner and loser of our polls compared to the final election results. One of the things you notice looking at the chart above is that there is a whole lot…
Author’s note: I started looking into this poll based upon the strange methodology details that I saw in the reporting on the poll. I’m a registered NPA and have been since I moved to Florida 13 years ago. At StPetePolls, clients from all across the political spectrum use our polling services. I know this analysis will discount the Tampa Bay Times and its new pollster to the benefit of the Democratic Party, but I would like to mention that six months…
One of the most important facts about polling that was reaffirmed this primary season is that sample size is the most important variable related to polling accuracy. We’ve noticed this before in elections, but this primary season there are several consistent examples of how accurate larger sample size polls are, and how inaccurate small sample size polls can be. The four races where we polled and had greater than 500 respondents all had very accurate results that were only 0.4%…