Analysis: Rising Senior Tide In Florida Governor Race Likely To Sink Crist

Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican-turned-Independent-turned-Republican again, is challenging incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Scott in the Florida governor race.

The Florida Governor race is the ninth article in what is a succession of articles offering expanded analysis on our 2014 Governor Map Predictions. Former governor and Republican-turned-Independent-turned-Democrat, Charlie Crist, will face incumbent Republican Governor Rick Scott in the 2014 midterm election.

Democrat strategists and pundits alike believed that Gov. Rick Scott was, perhaps, one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents up for reelection this midterm cycle. To be sure, early in the cycle, I saw the race in much the same light, with a few caveats. Even though early polling found Scott trailing Crist, early polling in 2010 also showed Crist running far ahead of now-Senator Marco Rubio for months. That is, until the September before the election. Crist, of course, was blown out of the water against Marco Rubio, who defeated the thought-to-be popular former governor by over 19 points.

Further, it was rumored that Scott was willing, able and prepared to spend upwards of $100 million to get himself reelected, which we now know is no longer a rumor — it’s true. Nevertheless, despite early polling and pundit grumblings, several key data points have prompted us to reexamine the Florida governor race, which has given us reason to believe Scott has a far better chance at reelection than previously thought.

First, even though we can never be too sure where Crist stands on the issues these days, it is likely that the midterm electorate won’t be too happy with his recent flip-flops. He was keynoting Democratic events around the state and endorsing gay marriage before he even announced his bid. Also, his campaign ran into a few bumps early in the cycle when he hired a certain problematic campaign manager, that is, until he quit after being introduced to donors. The news will be bad enough in an ad and in debates, but it is who that manager was that will play even worse in Florida. Crist hired campaign manager Bill Hyers, who was fresh off his big New York City win for outright socialist Mayor Bill de Blasio.

That may play well in NYC, but not in Florida.

Prior to being fired, in a Washington Post write-up, Hyers, too, downplayed his new boss’s early lead in polls, claiming he would be “massively” outspent. In truth, quite a few Democrats are still worried about Crist’s chances of defeating Gov. Scott, for reasons other than being outspent, and the staff shake-up certainly did not help growing calls for Sen. Bill Nelson to jump into the race to rescue his party. To calm their fears, Crist now hired Steve Schale as a senior political consultant, who ran Barack Obama’s 2008 Florida campaign.

Gov. Scott, too, created major problems with his own party when he flip-flopped on Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare. Many pundits said that deciding to support the ObamaCare provision was a way of improving his general election chances. I, however, am not too sure about that. But what is certain is that Crist’s unwavering support for the law will hurt him, particularly in light of the failed rollout, the cuts to Medicare mandated by the law and its stubbornly deep unpopularity.

ObamaCare will be a central issue in the campaign, and its power to sink Alex Sink was badly underestimated by other pundits. Alex Sink, who was also Scott’s 2010 opponent, had vocalized her hesitation to commit to another run, because of the still-recent death of her husband. Yet, she decided to run for the late C.W. Bill Young’s seat in FL-13 and was defeated by David Jolly in an upset that shocked everyone but People’s Pundit Daily. We called the race a “Toss-Up,” while both Larry Sabato at Crystal Ball and Charlie Cook of Cook Political Report called it for Sink.

As a resident of the state who is familiar with its politics, I knew both Jolly and Scott could easily turn around their early disadvantages. However, the outcome of FL-13 confirmed a deeper and more fundamental trend that I have long been suspicious of, and it will favor credible Republican candidates in future Sunshine State elections. Let’s take a look at the polling data first, then examine this trend in more detail.

A UNF poll found that Scott had already begun to cut Crist down to a 4-point lead back in September, which was prior to the ObamaCare debacle and Crist’s little-known campaign woe. Then, a January survey conducted by a Democratic pollster with a history of inaccurate and left-leaning survey results, PPP, found Crist leading by a statistically insignificant 2 percent. Last year, I argued that a good share of Scott’s support was understated in polling due to the fact Tea Party support was wavering, but I am now apt to think they will come home when it counts.

“Gov. Scott has shored up some Republican voters, but he’s also doing about as well among independents and members of the opposing party as Mr. Crist,” said Frank Orlando, a political science instructor at St. Leo University after releasing their March poll. Orlando found a 9-point swing in favor of Scott since their last survey in December. The poll also found only 29 percent of Florida voters are “more likely” to vote for a candidate who supports ObamaCare, while a 52 percent majority say they are less likely to vote for a candidate who backs Obama’s health-care law.

And in just over one week, voters’ support for Crist has deteriorated further. The latest Voter Survey Service poll conducted for Sunshine State News now shows Scott ahead by 1 point, 45 to 44 percent. But Scott leads 49 to 42 percent among those who say they have an “excellent” or “good chance” of voting in the November election, a finding not at all surprising considering midterm election data trends. Florida midterm elections are dominated by older voters, who have moved from reliably Democratic voters in 1992 to solidly Republican now, as was recently reported by Gallup.

“That, to me, is a very important piece of information, because it really does show the enthusiasm gap clearly favors the Republican Party in a non-presidential year,” said James Lee, president of Voter Survey Service. “It’s very easy for me to make the case that this could be a 3- or 4-point lead for Rick Scott right now, not a 1 point lead.”

I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Lee, who consequently is president of the single-most accurate pollster during the 2010 Florida Governor race. Yet I would stress the toxicity of ObamaCare among the senior voting bloc, as well as Floridians as a whole. The VSS poll also found 51 percent of Florida voters would be less likely to vote for a candidate that supports ObamaCare, while just 39 percent said they would vote for a candidate that supports the law.

The projected Partisan Voting Index in 2014 mirrors the R+2 advantage in 2010, but is likely understated if FL-13 offered us any lesson at all. In 2010, the Republican Party didn’t have the new Honeybadger database that performed so well in FL-13, helping to close the tech gap if not exceed the Democrats, altogether. Unlike Cuccinelli in Virginia, who saw a late surge when ObamaCare came front and center, Scott has the money to hit Crist where it is already hurting.

“The campaigning that’s happening on the ground … some of the TV wars have already kicked in,” Lee told Sunshine State News. “The impact of ObamaCare and the linkage of Crist to ObamaCare certainly is a very important reason why, in this poll, you see Crist losing ground.”

Because I see Crist continuing to lose even more ground as Scott bombards him with attack ads, which still carry considerable sway in Florida, as well as the Republicans’ tech improvements in the state, we are moving this race from “Toss-Up” to “Leans Republican,” even if we see it moving that way ever-so slightly. When we plug in the variables, Gov. Rick Scott is more likely than not to be victorious in November, and he will have what are now reliably Republican seniors and outraged Tea Partiers to thank for it.