With less than two weeks until election day, the gubernatorial race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum has tightened.
Gillum was leading DeSantis by 4-6 points in all the recent public opinion polls taken, but the latest WCTV-TV poll of 800 likely voters has DeSantis up by a margin of 48% to 45%.
The poll’s margin of error is +/-3.6%, so DeSantis’ lead does fall under the margin of error.
This poll, which also shows that DeSantis has a higher favorability rating that Gillum (43%-40%) does not reflect Wednesday night’s second and last gubernatorial debate, where both men took each other’s record and missteps to task.
Gillum appeared to play the race card and all but calling DeSantis a racist.
DeSantis, who got a little testy when asked about potentially racist statements made by some of his supporters, did managed to get under Gillum’s skin, pushing the Mayor of Tallahassee to visibly lose his cool.
The cage match between DeSantis and Gillum spilled over into the spin room, where the candidate’s respective surrogates wrestled over who won the debate.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) and Gillum’s Democratic gubernatorial primary opponent got animated. Click here to see the vide exchange.
Another one of Gillum’s spinsters, Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch, told reporters than Gillum showed the necessary “leadership” to be governor, while DeSantis could only muster up “attack after attack.”
Here is what people left tonight’s debate with.
They understand that there is one person on that stage who has the leadership necessary to be the governor of Florida, and there was one politician who was hurling attack after attack, lying and attacking the record and the person of his opponent to try to claw his way back into a race that he sees slipping away from him. -Rep. Ted Deutch
