If DeSantis loses governor's race...

it's not his migrant stunt, it's all the crap Ron did before that.

Polls are the mother-in-laws of politics.

Get a bad one, and a campaign will make a crude joke of it. Get a good one and the candidate looks like the knight in shining armor.

Ron DeSantis seems to have dozens of polls, partisan and non-partisan, giving him a slight edge to just outside the margin of error in his relection race against former Governor (and former Republican) Charlie Crist.

It’s a good rule of thumb when analyzing a poll to divide the margin of error by half and subtract that number from the candidate you prefer and add the same half to the candidate you oppose. As an example: Republican X is leading Democrat Y 46%-45% with a 4 point margin of error — realism and pragmatism ought to lead one to see the race as 48%-43% favoring the GOP candidate. It gives one’s campaign a proper perspective.

Idealism and denialism would look a such a poll and think it’s a 1 point race or the mindless optimism of “we might actually be ahead.” GOTV¹ fails miserably with that kind of thinking.

Polling suffers from “garbage-in garbage-out” realism. Poor sampling, poor methodologies, question semantics, and statistical biases often lead to worthless data at the end.

Which is what made a poll from Political Matrix/Listener Group so interesting. Greg Fink, head of Listener, put out a poll (several actually) that contradicts all the other polling in Florida — instead 4-7 point spread favoring Ron DeSantis, Fink has Charlie Crist up 53%-47%.²

Guffaws and outlier comments about the Political Matrix/Listener poll aside, it’s unlikely that DeSantis is up by much, if at all. He won by a razor thin margin (and only a plurality) in 2018. In addition, DeSantis has had a run of controversy³ after controversy⁴ as governor that Fink delineated in his interview on The Dan Abrams Show.

It’s worth noting that unlike many other pollsters who take a “one and done” approach to polling and then rely on other pollsters to confirm their findings, Political Matrix/Listener Group constantly polls in Florida and have their own meta-data of results to see trends that other pollsters are likely missing.

Trends like this:

DeSantis’s recent approval/disapproval ratings⁵ are middling at best for an imcumbent and falling. Forty-one percent of Floridians approve of DeSantis as governor compared to 33% who disapprove. That’s down considerably from a February 2022 approval percentage of 54%.⁶ Stunts like firing teachers, waging faux culture wars, and flying legal immigrants to Massachusetts are the cause of much of that.

Ron DeSantis, like his predecessor Rick Scott in 2014, might just limp to a plurality reelection victory rather than a presidential ambition percentage. That would make one Floridian very happy as DeSantis is his main Republican challenger in 2024.

1. Get Out The Vote.

2. https://www.newsnationnow.com/danabramslive/poll-desantis-trails-crist-in-florida-governors-race/

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/28/desantis-culture-wars/

4. https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/22/politics/governor-desantis-imperial-governorship-analysis/index.html

5. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1307107/favorability-ron-desantis-us/

6. https://floridapolitics.com/archives/501188-poll-floridians-give-gov-desantis-54-approval-rating-but-are-split-over-legislature/