A TargetSmart and William & Mary poll of early and likely voters released this morning shows some 28 percent of Florida Republicans who have already voted flipped to cast their ballots for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
"It's really quite remarkable," TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier enthused to an MSNBC audience Tuesday. "Clinton has an 8 point lead among early voters in this key battleground state, and it's been fueled almost entirely by crossover GOP voters."
"This isn't entirely a surprise," retired Miami political consultant C. Ralph Weintraub told Sunshine State News. "But it gives us some idea how many in the GOP in Florida feel disenfranchised by their own nominee. We'll see if the FBI email drama playing out causes Donald Trump to pick up steam as we get closer to voting day."
Clinton holds a 48 to 40 percent lead over Trump, a more advantageous position for her than most other publicly available polling has suggested in the last week or so. As of the morning of Nov. 1, TargetSmart had tracked 3,695,359 people who already cast their votes in Florida.
The numbers amount to more than a quarter of early Florida voters picking Clinton over GOP nominee Donald Trump.
The TargetSmart/William & Mary poll was shared early with MSNBC.
Leveraging TargetSmart’s proprietary voter file -- something that is updated daily through the early voting window -- this poll reached a significant number of voters who have already participated. Among those early voters (who were asked which candidate they had voted for), Clinton outpaces Trump by a 17-point margin, 55 to 38 percent.
Reflective of the trends that have been published in other public polls in recent days, the TargetSmart/William & Mary poll shows the contest in Florida is very competitive among those who have yet to cast their ballot. Among those non-early voters (who were asked which candidate they will vote for), Clinton attracts 42 percent of the vote and 43 percent back Donald Trump.
The poll also shows the U.S. Senate race tilting decidedly in Marco Rubio’s direction. Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy trails Rubio 43 to 49 percent. Unlike Clinton, Murphy only breaks even with early voters, having garnered 48 percent of the vote to Rubio’s 47 percent. And, among non-early voters, Rubio holds a solid lead with 51 percent of the vote to Murphy’s 39 percent.
Methodology
The TargetSmart/William & Mary Poll was conducted using a blended web/phone data collection approach. As weighted, 530 online interviews were conducted from Oct. 25 to Oct. 28 among panelists from six leading online opt-in panel providers who were matched to the TargetSmart voter file.
As weighted, 188 telephone interviews were conducted from Oct. 27-30, to supplement the online sample, with telephone numbers for targeted populations being selected at random from the TargetSmart voter file.
The survey reached 311 respondents who voted early in the 2016 general election, either absentee, by mail, or in-person, according to data from Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, that was matched back to the TargetSmart voter file. These early-vote data were weighted to reflect population parameters on TargetSmart Partisanship Score, TargetSmart 2016 General Election Turnout Score, age, gender, party registration and media market of the overall population of early voters in Florida who had participated as of Oct. 31.
The survey reached 407 respondents who had NOT voted early in the 2016 general election. These non-early vote data were weighted using a two-step process to yield a likely voter model.
Then, to derive a likely voter model, a second round of weighting was employed on the non-early vote sample only, in which weights were assigned to each respondent in proportion to their TargetSmart 2016 General Election Turnout score, with higher weights being assigned to respondents with a higher likelihood to vote, and lower weights being assigned to respondents with a lower likelihood to vote.
TargetSmart and William & Mary
Over 25 years, TargetSmart has evolved as a leading provider of political data that enables campaigns and organizations to successfully communicate with large audiences, and personalize outreach.
"Our superior, politically-focused, consultative approach combines consumer data, databases, data integration and consulting solutions for personalized multichannel marketing strategies," claims the press release.
William & Mary is a public university in Williamsburg, Va. Founded by Royal Charter in 1693, it is the second oldest institution of higher education in the United States. U.S. News and World Report ranks it sixth among all public universities in the country.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
