New poll shows Putnam and Graham still front-runners in race for governor, but races tightening

by | Feb 6, 2018


A new poll shows Republican Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and former Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Graham still lead their parties in the race for governor, but their challengers are closing the gap with a large percentage of voters still undecided.

The Mason-Dixon survey released Tuesday morning shows Putnam continues to be the front-runner in the race for the GOP nomination, but U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis is a close second trailing Putnam by a margin of 27-23 percent. House Speaker Richard Corcoran, who is expected to announce his candidacy for governor after the end of the legislative session, received 7 percent.

On the Democratic side, Graham maintains a narrow 20-17 percent lead over Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine among registered Democrats. Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum is in third place with 10 percent, while Winter Park businessman Chris King is in fourth with 4 percent.

The Mason-Dixon poll shows that more than more than 40 percent of the electorate in the primaries are still undecided, mostly on the Democratic side with 49 percent of those surveyed uncertain who’ll they’ll vote for. On the Republican side, 43 percent are undecided.

The poll reflects that name recognition plays a key role in the choices of those surveyed. Graham has an 8-point name recognition over Levine, while Putnam has a 7-point lead over DeSantis.

According to the survey, Corcoran and King have their work cut out for them in terms of name recognition. Only 7 percent of those polled recognized Corcoran’s name compared with 70 percent who say they are not familiar with him. Only King received lower name recognition marks. Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed said they were unfamiliar with who he is.

The primaries are scheduled for Aug. 28.

The poll of 500 registered Democratic and 500 registered Republican voters was conducted between Jan. 29 and Feb. 1. The poll has a 4.5 percent margin of error.

 

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