The Miami Herald’s Marc Caputo has an excellent crunching of the numbers in Congressional District 13 that is a must-read for anyone following the race.
In his post, Caputo concludes that the data indicates this race is Democrat Alex Sink’s to lose.
“Aggregate and average out the polls taken in the Pinellas County seat since late January,” writes Caputo, “when absentee ballots were sent out, and Sink edges Republican David Jolly by as little as 0.63 percentage points to almost 4 percentage points, depending on how you slice the data.”
Some of the data Caputo reviews are from polls commissioned by this blog, so far be it for me to quibble with Caputo’s conclusion based on these numbers.
But what if the conventional wisdom, as it applies to CD 13, is off?
The CV holds that David Jolly and the GOP, as it did in 2010, needs to build up a healthy lead with early, mail-in voters. This is so the Republican can hold off the expected Election Day surge from independent voters. This is how elections in Pinellas County have worked for a decade-and-a-half.
But two forces are/may be at work in CD 13.
First, it’s no longer true that Democrats in Pinellas aren’t voting early at the same pace as Republicans. In fact, according to some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic, there are actually more 4-over-4 and 3-over-4 Republican “super voters” still on the Republican side than there are on the Democratic side. In other words, the early vote is the election more than ever before and there won’t be a Democratic surge on Election Day.
Democrats argue that there are so many Republican ballots not returned/not going for Jolly because he’s a flawed candidate and these GOP voters are just going to sit this race out.
That’s doubtful.
Actually, what is driving the undervote is the fact that there are several hotly contested municipal elections in CD 13, including in Clearwater, Safety Harbor and Pinellas Park. These voters are, presumably, as interested in who will be their mayor or city council member as they are their U.S. Representative. (Trust me, the voters in Safety Harbor care a lot more about their mayoral race than Jolly vs. Sink).
The data bears this out: In parts of CD 13 where there is no municipal election, turnout is at 51.3 percent, but in Clearwater it is 44 percent, Pinellas Park it is 43 percent and Safety Harbor is at 47 percent. These municipalities represent 23 percent of total early-vote requestors in CD13.
Of those who have not voted, many more are Republican “super voters” than Democratic ones. By one estimate, there are just under 19,000 4-over-4 and 3-over-4 GOP voters who have yet to vote, while there are approximately 9,600 Dem voters with this performance history.
Bottom line: Alex Sink is likely ahead, but, as Caputo concludes, albeit for different reasons, the race is not over. Believe it or not, the battle for CD may come down to Republican turnout on Election Day.
Whodathunkit?
