Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis heads into Election Day today with his biggest lead in the polls since his re-election campaign began.
On Monday, the Real Clear Politics average of all polls showed that a left-leaning pollster Data for Progress had the incumbent up 15 points on his Democratic rival, Charlie Crist.
DeSantis has actually padded his lead over the former congressman from Clearwater, as the same pollster had him leading by 12 just two weeks ago.
The Data for Progress poll was seconded by a different poll conducted by the Research Co. That firm, according to the conservative website The Capitolist on Monday, showed DeSantis ahead of Crist by 14 points.
DeSantis has galloped away in the polling in the last leg of the campaign.
According to Real Clear Politics, DeSantis was ahead by just three points in early August, and in one poll, conducted by St. Pete Polls, he actually trailed Crist by one point.
But by late August, the wheels started coming off Crist’s wobbly campaign.
For example, in August he named as his running mate Karla Hernandez, the radical boss of the Miami teachers’ union, who was exposed as sympathetic to the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and critical of the governor’s policy to keep schools open, which helped Florida students avoid the academic setbacks recorded in many lockdown blue states.
Crist also adopted President Joe Biden’s language about Republicans being dangerous to the future of the country; he compared himself to Jesus Christ and Tom Brady; he reiterated his support for radical gender dysphoria treatment for children and for allowing teachers to implement lesson plans based sexual orientation and gender identity; he sought to raise money off Hurricane Ian victims, and he refused to fire his campaign manager after a domestic violence arrest.
Crist also went against the grain in his own party, as, unlike many Democrats, he was willing to let Biden, arguably the most unpopular political figure in the nation, campaign for him.
The shift for DeSantis at this point is a staggering change from four years ago, when on election eve DeSantis trailed Democrat Andrew Gillum by 3.6 points, as recorded by the Real Clear Politics average of all polls.
DeSantis wound up winning that race by just shy of 33,000 votes, out of 8.1 million cast.
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