She's Within Striking Distance of Rick Scott's Senate Seat

1 point separates Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell from Florida incumbent in new poll
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 6, 2024 1:41 PM CDT
She's Within Striking Distance of Rick Scott's Senate Seat
Former US Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate, is seen before an appearance by President Biden at Hillsborough Community College on April 23 in Tampa, Florida.   (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)

Rick Scott hasn't seemed particularly worried, at least not publicly, about the Democratic challenger for his US Senate seat out of Florida. But a new poll shows Debbie Mucarsel-Powell—an Ecuadorian who came to the US as a teen and was the first South American immigrant elected to Congress—is within striking distance of an upset. Per Florida Politics, the Emerson College survey that polled 815 likely voters Sept. 3-5 shows the 53-year-old behind her 71-year-old GOP competitor by just a single "statistically insignificant" percentage point, 45% to 46%.

The site notes that "this is the closest poll yet between the two, and the result is particularly remarkable given the GOP lean of the sample, which is 39% Republican and 32% Democrat." Florida Politics cites other polls from earlier this year that have given Scott—who also served as Florida's governor from 2011 to 2019, at which point he became the state's junior senator—a wide range of leads, from a narrow 2-point advantage to a much larger 16-point one. Scott himself has pooh-poohed polling that shows Mucarsel-Powell hot on his tail, telling the site in mid-August, "We're going to have a big win. ... In all three of my [previous] races, polls said I was going to lose ... because they're not accurate."

Newsweek noted last month that the entire Sunshine State might be a contender to turn blue, with a poll at the time showing former President Donald Trump only 3 percentage points ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in their run for the Oval Office, with 50% of likely voters supporting him, 47% for Harris, and a 3-point margin of error. "Rick Scott had to loan his campaign money, and it is still the primary," entrepreneur Chris Bouzy, the founder of social media site Spoutible, posted on X around that time. "I tried to tell y'all months ago Democrats are on the verge of flipping Florida and the Senate seat." (More Florida stories.)

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