Nelson wins another victory, Camp Scott pushes back with his own numbers

TALLAHASSEE – Massive advance with independent voters helps Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) Retain a 6-point lead over Governor Rick Scott in one of the country's most watched Senate races, according to new figures released Monday by Quinnipiac University.

Nelson has had a slight lead in five of the last six polls. Whenever Scott's camp made fun of him publicly, the new numbers prompted them on Monday to release their pollster's numbers showing that Scott was up 51 to 46.

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Quinnipiac has long shown Nelson that he holds a leading position among voters with no major political affiliation. This advance has now reached more than 20 percentage points, which, if it continues, would make the three-term Democratic Senator very difficult to eliminate, even after Scott has spent nearly $ 40 million of his personal wealth on the race.

"At this point, Senator Nelson is six points ahead of 60 percentage points, compared to 38 to 38 percent," said Peter A. Brown, deputy director of the Quinnipiac University poll, in a statement. "If this margin holds, the senator will be hard to beat. In addition, Senator Nelson's advantage over women by 20 points is twice that of Governor Scott's men. "

While Nelson holds a substantial lead among these key demographic figures, Scott holds a 54-44 lead with the men and 53-44 with the White voters, two key voting blocks for the Republicans. Nelson leads 94-3 with black voters and 59-39 with Hispanic voters.

The 1,160 likely voters polled also awarded Donald Trump an employment approval rate of 46 to 51 percent, which remains underwater, but shows signs of improvement. A survey released by Quinnipiac University in early September had Trump's approval between 44 and 54.

Like other major races across the country, the Senator and Governor's races in Florida are considered a referendum on Trump, which has dominated most of the messages sent by both sides throughout the year 2018. Republican candidates for governorship positions Ron DeSantis and Scott are particularly close allies to Trump, who appeared with Scott earlier this month after Hurricane Michael and tweeted his support for DeSantis after the first debate on the post Governor, Sunday.

The last Quinnipiac poll is a bit already seen for Scott. In 2014, at a quinnipiac poll held in October, his opponent, Charlie Crist, had 47 to 29 independent voters, but Crist eventually defeated him by far and lost the race.

Quinnipiac was on the field from October 17-22 and interviewed live 1,161 respondents with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. The survey allowed respondents to identify their party membership, which led to a sample of 35% Republicans, 32% Democrats and 29% without major political affiliation. This Republican advance is consistent with the performance of the Florida electorate during the last mid-term election cycles, which have historically been characterized by low Democrat participation.

The Scott survey, conducted by OnMessage, Virginia, was conducted between October 14th and 18th. The size of his sample was 2,200, the Republican leaning by 1 percentage point. He had a margin of error of 2%.