No, that's
not a typo. According to a poll of registered Republicans last week,
Congressman Alan Grayson has an enormous lead in the Republican primary
for Florida Congressional District 8 (FL-8).
Of course, Grayson is a Democrat. Yet
Grayson is far and away the leading choice among registered
Republicans in FL-8. In fact, he has almost twice as much
support among Republicans as all his Republican opponents combined.
In the poll, Grayson won the support
of 27.8% of registered Republicans. None of Grayson's 13
opponents scored higher than 3.7%. Their combined performance was
only 14.5%. The remaining 57.7% of registered Republicans were
undecided.
30.1% of
registered Republican women support Grayson. And Grayson has the
support of 25.5% of registered Republican men.
Grayson also has an enormous lead in
name recognition. 76.9% of Republicans know Grayson; none of
his opponents scored higher than 15.1%. 81.4% of Republican men know
Grayson, and 72.4% of Republican women know him.
Grayson received high marks from
Republicans for his Constitution initiative. Over half of all
Republicans said that they were more likely to vote for Grayson
because he passed a resolution urging high schools to teach the
Constitution, and he had distributed tens of thousands of copies of the
Constitution throughout the district.
Interestingly, Grayson is more popular
among Republicans than Republican Governor Charlie Crist is. 42% of
Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of Crist, far more than those
who have an unfavorable opinion of Grayson.
Asked to comment, Congressman Grayson
said, "it's like I've been saying: People like a Congressman with guts.
They want someone who works hard, pays attention, and gets things
done. For goodness sake, we increased federal competitive grants in
this district by 98% in our first year. That extra $100 million
benefits Republicans, Independents and Democrats equally. People of
every political persuasion want to see action to help solve their
problems, and that's what they're seeing from us."
When asked if he might run in the
Republican primary, Grayson said, "as this poll shows, if I did, then I
would win."
The poll was conducted on Feb. 26th.
There were 324 respondents, all registered Republicans in FL-8. The
margin of error was 5%. The poll was conducted by Middleton Market
Research.