Jeb's Florida poll numbers are unprecedentedly bad

Jeb Bush’s poll numbers in Florida are unprecedentedly bad


On cue, the Bay News 9/News 13 Florida Decides Poll was released — and it found Bush in a staggeringly weak position back home. Bush won the support of only 7 percent of Florida GOP primary voters in the automated SurveyUSA poll of a state where he had won two elections and narrowly lost a third. He was 30 points behind front-runner Donald Trump (also a Florida resident, part-time). He had less than half the support of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). In almost every demographic breakdown, he staggered into fifth place. His best demographic? Non-Cuban Hispanic voters. Donald Trump was their first choice; Jeb Bush was their third.

Miller's warnings aside, it is exceedingly rare for a home-state favorite to fall so low. You can split hairs and point out that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) polls badly in his home state, or that former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley is polling third in the state he ran until this year.

But a candidate of Bush's stature — an establishment favorite, the race's fundraising leader — rarely bombs like this. In 2012, there were very few polls of the Massachusetts presidential primary, but former governor Mitt Romney led them by an average of 46 points. In 2008, even before he won the Iowa caucuses (i.e. in the period when then-New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was the national poll leader), then-Sen. Barack Obama always held leads in Illinois.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/03/jeb-bushs-poll-numbers-in-florida-are-unprecedentedly-bad/