Good Wednesday morning. Breaking late Tuesday — “Donald Trump cancels planned Tampa Bay Buccaneers game appearance,” via Shauna Muckle of the Tampa Bay Times — President Trump is no longer expected to attend Sunday’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Raymond James Stadium, reversing plans CNN reported earlier. Reporter Kristen Holmes initially said Trump would attend as part of a tour of battleground states ahead of the Nov. 3 General Election but later reported White House officials had canceled the appearance. Trump said Tuesday he plans to visit Florida, Arizona, Montana, Georgia and Kentucky to bolster Republican support. Florida’s closely watched Governor’s race pits Republican Byron Donalds against Democrat David Jolly, while Republicans are targeting additional congressional seats following mid-decade redistricting. The revised map includes Democratic U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor’s Hillsborough County District. 
Donald Trump skips the Buccaneers game, leaving Sunday’s political playbook without a presidential appearance. ___ Three weeks from Election Day, Donalds' campaign says his lead is growing. A memo from Ryan Smith, Chief Strategist for Team Donalds, first published on Florida Politics, puts Donalds ahead of Jolly 49%-43% head-to-head and 46%-39% on the full ballot in a survey by Fabrizio, Lee & Associates conducted Oct. 8-11. Smith calls the result consistent with last week's Mason-Dixon poll, which had Donalds up 48%-41%, and points to Jolly's latest Change Research survey, which ties the race at 47%. "Even liberal David Jolly cannot produce a poll showing himself ahead," Smith writes. 
David Jolly, Byron Donalds, Ashley Moody and Angie Nixon face a crowded scoreboard of Florida polling numbers. The memo says the campaign's turnout operation, with mail, text, phones, doors, digital, and Black and Hispanic outreach, is "in full effect," with field teams knocking tens of thousands of doors a day. Democrats have returned more mail ballots overall, Smith writes, and Republicans are returning a higher share of the ballots they requested, 23% to 22%. Donalds holds a 6:1 resource advantage and is on pace to hit his fundraising goal by Oct. 29. "No one listened to him on MSNBC, and no one should listen to him now," Smith writes of Jolly, predicting the Democrat's campaign will turn "shriller" as the margin grows. Stetson University's Center for Public Opinion Research gives Donalds a bigger cushion: an 11-point lead, 52% to 41%. Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody leads Democrat Angie Nixon by the same margin, and Republicans lead 50%-41% on the generic congressional ballot, with 8% undecided, a result Stetson casts as evidence that Florida has moved well to the right of a national electorate leaning toward Democrats. Those are commanding numbers. The full report shows they could have been much redder. After demographic weighting and Stetson's likely-voter adjustment, its online panel recalled a 2024 electorate in which Trump received 61.3% of the two-party vote. Trump actually received 56.6%. Stetson therefore anchored respondents' recalled votes to the certified result, shaving roughly 6 points off the R+17 margin to about R+11. Stetson also said earlier surveys overweighted voters under 24 and those over 65. Stetson corrected those targets and recalculated its previous results. Under the revised figures, Moody led 52% to 40% in September and 52% to 41% in October. The Senate race, as pollster Kelly Smith put it, "has narrowed slightly." Mathletics aside, Stetson still has both Democrats staring up from an 11-point hole. Steve Vancore gives the poll three and a half grains of salt in his Salt Shaker review. Stetson drew its sample from an opt-in online panel of Florida adults instead of the voter file, and roughly 87% of those adults said they were registered, above the share of Floridians on the rolls. Stetson's likely-voter model then predicts self-reported 2022 turnout from more self-reports, which Vancore calls "social desirability response patterning stacked on social desirability response patterning." "My point isn't that the lead is inflated," Vancore writes. "It's that nobody, including Stetson, can tell from this design how big it really is." The other new poll leans just as red and still can't get the property tax amendment over the line. The latest survey from the AIF Center for Political Strategy has Amendment 3 at 53% support, seven points short of the 60% it needs to pass. Another 28% oppose the amendment and 19% are undecided. That majority isn't rock solid, either. Only two in five voters told the pollster they would "definitely" vote for the plan, which would raise the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes to $150,000 next year with further increases down the line. Support failed to reach 60% in any media market. Miami and Tampa came closest at 56% each, while Orlando registered the weakest support at 48%. It did fare well among Republicans, 68% of whom plan to back it. Yet only 50% of independents and fewer than a third of Democrats plan to join them. Age and income produced similarly sharp divides. Support stood at 36% among voters younger than 30 and 55% among those older than 40. AIF also reported that support increased with household income, with low-income voters at 44%. Black voters supported the proposal at 58%, compared with 53% of white voters and 50% of Hispanic voters. McLaughlin & Associates surveyed 800 likely Florida General Election voters from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, with an R+14 turnout model. It has a margin of error of ± 3.5 percentage points. ___ Ballard Partners is adding Dubai- and London-based strategic communications firm Farrant Group to the Ballard Global Alliance. The partnership connects Farrant Group’s communications and reputation-management work with Ballard Partners’ lobbying and government affairs operation in Washington and across the United States. 
Michael Farrant brings a Dubai connection to Ballard Partners’ expanding global alliance. For Ballard Partners, the agreement brings the Global Alliance its first member firm in the United Arab Emirates and expands a Middle East presence that already includes offices in Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Istanbul. Farrant Group’s clients, meanwhile, will gain access to Ballard Partners’ U.S. lobbying network. “Dubai has become one of the world’s great crossroads for diplomacy, capital, and commerce, and Farrant Group has earned the trust of governments and leaders operating in some of the most demanding and closely watched environments anywhere,” firm founder and President Brian Ballard said. “Together, we will give our clients seamless, coordinated counsel from Washington to the Gulf and beyond.” Farrant Group founder and CEO Michael Farrant added, “Farrant Group is delighted to be working with Ballard Partners in this regard and looks forward to a collaboration that delivers the results clients have come to expect." The firms said they will jointly offer government and public affairs work, strategic communications, crisis and reputation management, litigation and regulatory communications, and market-access and business-development services. The partnership will focus on clients with interests in the United States, the UAE and the United Kingdom. |
