A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll1 shows Lori Edwards bucking national political trends and leading Dennis Ross 35 to 32 percent, with official Tea Party candidate Randy Wilkinson receiving 20 percent of the vote.. Edwards is well positioned to take advantage of the dynamics of this race.She is popular,receiving a nearly 2:1 positive-to-negative favorability ratio, including a solidly net positive favorability rating from Republican voters.
This race provides a clear example of the impact a Tea Party candidate can have this year. On top of the national Tea Party momentum, Wilkinson is a candidate with a particular ability to siphon votes away from the Republican candidate and hold them. He’s a Republican County Commissioner with a 12-point name identification advantage over Ross, and his positive favorability rating is double that of Ross’.
Wilkinson pulls roughly twice as many votes from Ross as from Edwards, drawing 18 percent Republican voters and 36 percent of Republican-leaning Independents, an ideologically conservative bloc.
The sample for this survey was drawn randomly from a list of registered voters and stratified by the townships and precincts in Florida’s 12th Congressional district.Quotas were assigned to reflect the expected contribution of these areas to the total vote in the 2010 general election. The sample reflects the demographic composition of the likely 2010 electorate in this district. Party registration in the survey is 42 percent Democratic and 44 percent Republican (party registration of all registered voters in the district is 42 percent Democratic and 35 percent
