In a poll released on Thursday by the Tampa Bay Times, Democrat Alex Sink holds a 7-point lead over Republican David Jolly in Florida’s 13th District Special Election. The election will be held on March 11th to fill the lat CW Bill Young’s Congressional seat. Young, a Republican, was the longest serving Republican member of the House of Representatives when he died last October. By Florida law, Governor Rick Scott was not allowed to name a replacement to serve out Young’s term. Therefore, a special election was announced.
This is a prime opportunity for Democrats to pick up another seat in the House. With the mid-terms coming up in November, it would be great to get Sink in office and established so they can hold on to the district. In the later years of Young’s tenure in the House, his district became more and more Democratic, generally going for the Democratic nominee in Presidential elections over the past 20 years. So it is no surprise that with him gone, the district is up for grabs.
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What should be interesting in this race is that Sink has been very supportive of the ACA and has not shied away from discussing the health care law. Therefore, this could be seen as a way to debunk the theory that Obamacare is going to be a negative campaigning tool for Democrats in the upcoming mid-terms. Considering that more and more people are signing up and seeing the positive benefits of the law, it might even be the case that Democrats will see that they can use the law to their benefit, and turn the table on Republicans.
Currently, Sink is ahead in the poll over Jolly 42-35, with Libertarian candidate Lucas Overby getting an additional 4%. Obviously, with Overby in the race, it can only hurt Jolly, as the vast majority of people that support Overby would vote for Jolly if they just had two choices. Sink, the state’s former CFO, is also polling slightly stronger with independents, with 33% supporting her compared to 27% for Jolly. However, that does leave quite a few undecided with less than a month before the election.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
