Alex Sink running for Bill Young's old house seat

[Torie]

The turnout numbers seem so far seem to fit the Jolly "win" model (about 170K total votes cast), with about 140K so far, rather than the 200K number that favors Sink, so ...

[Torie]

The turnout numbers seem so far seem to fit the Jolly "win" model (about 170K total votes cast), with about 140K so far, rather than the 200K number that favors Sink, so ...

What numbers are you using? At 4:30 the SOE announced 8.8% ED turnout with 27.5% EV/AB turnout for a total of 36.3%. There are 460,600 FL13 voters eligible, so approx. 167k have cast ballots so far.

I think it'll be close.

I was using the earlier posted figure. My guess is the final figure will be around 175K given the new numbers.

[Torie]

Nobody but me thinks relative candidate quality and resume, plus infinite amounts of money, (considerably more than Jolly or so I have read),  gave Sink a few points (maybe 3%-5%, and what sunk her was the national environment? Sink to me had reputation, name recognition, and was a good ideological fit for the district as a moderate Dem. (Yes, she dodged a debate, which was a mistake.) Jolly was not nearly as much in that category.  

[Torie]

Well, the spin machine is on.

Link


MEMO: IN HEAVILY REPUBLICAN DISTRICT, DEMOCRATS PROVED THEY CAN COMPETE



Interesting. Before it was Jolly who was setting expectations down.

That is indeed S-P-I-N - on steroids. Political hacks, and there are far too many in both parties, have no shame. When their lips are moving, you know they're lying.

[Torie]

If we are going to talk about the national implications of the race, it is important to note that Obama only won this district by 1.5 points in 2012. Sink lost by about 2 points. This implies that the national generic vote would be about even, which is where it was in 2012. How does this tell us anything new? If it tells us that the Democrats won't be retaking the house, then I would say that everyone already knew that. Yes, Democrats need to win this sort of seat to win the house but that is not going to happen in 2014. Whether or not the Democrats hold on to the Senate is the real question this election cycle and this race doesn't give us an answer to that question.

That assumes the candidate quality was about equal. If Sink were a superior candidate vis a vis Jolly, as I assumed, then one comes to a different conclusion. It is interesting Sink did so much better with the absentees than she did with the election day voters. That suggests the Dems were far superior on the ground than the Pubs were, which is another possible factor in the mix to consider. It is rather hard to believe that higher scale SES voters tend to vote on election day rather than before, when one's intuition is precisely the opposite, and I think in 2012 Obama did in fact do a bit better with the election day voters than the absentees. Another explanation is that Sink "sank" at the end of the race, and if that if most voters were election day voters, rather than absentees, than the election would have been more of a Jolly blow out.