Florida presidential race comes down to the wire

Florida presidential race comes down to the wire
Polls show virtual tie in battle for state's 29 electoral votes
Orlando Sentinel
By William E. Gibson
Washington Bureau
November 4, 2012

WASHINGTON — The presidential race in Florida is heading for a neck-and-neck finish Tuesday, with Republican challenger Mitt Romney gathering momentum in the economically strapped state in the last days of a closely contested campaign.

Late polls and voter comments indicate that President Barack Obama's narrow lead has disappeared as independent and late-deciding voters turn to Romney.

The result appears to be a virtual tie in the contest for Florida's 29 electoral votes — the biggest swing state in the country — going into Election Day. More than 3 million Floridians have already cast their votes, with Democratic voters holding a slight lead.

"It looks like another down-to-the-wire race," said Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University. "I don't think there are a lot of undecideds. It's going to come down to which side is more effective at getting their voters to come out in higher numbers. That makes for a divisive election and a divided government after the election."

A Quinnipiac University poll taken Oct. 23-29 shows a statistical tie but had Obama up 48 percent to 47 percent. At week's end, the RealClearPolitics average of Florida polls showed Romney with 49 percent and Obama with 48 percent, also a statistical tie.

The presidential race, a U.S. Senate election and six close congressional contests will give Florida viewers much to watch Tuesday night.

Two-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has led most polls since August, with last week's Q-Poll showing him up 52 percent to 39 percent over Republican U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV. But Mack is hoping that his ties to Romney — he has accompanied Romney at every Florida appearance in the past week — will boost him to a win.

Democrats are hoping to add two more congressional seats —– one in Central Florida and the other in Broward County — and are hoping to knock off as many as four incumbent Republicans across the state, including U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden.
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I stood in line for over an hour to early vote on Thursday. The ballot was two pages front and back. As I was filling it out, all I could think about what how lousy this congress did for this country. For the last two years they have done a marvelous job on blocking everything while not spending any sleepless nights trying to come up with anything to replace the bills they were blocking.

The worst thing is that before members of the Senate went back to their states, they put a veterans jobs bill on hold until after the election. Wasn't that nice of them? They think we're stupid. They think we won't notice most of our suffering came from them simply because John Boehner decided to cover up for what congress was not doing.

"The Democrat-controlled Senate, it hasn't passed a budget in more than 1,000 days."

Boehner didn't think it was important to add in the fact that the Senate, no matter which party controls it, needs a super majority to get anything up for a vote. He should remember that simply because he was among the top whiners going to reporters and saying "Give us an up or down vote!" But if he said anything about what we're all talking about, then congress would have to accept the blame for all of this.

Then we have Mitch McConnell saying their number one priority was to make President Obama a one term president in 2010.

The fact anything changed at all was because of the first two years and the fact things have not been done in the last two years can be directly tied to the members of congress putting politics ahead of the people.

While most people are afraid of who will be elected president, I'm more afraid of who will be in charge of the congress. If it is the same folks that had control over the last two years, we're all screwed! They proved political games trumps what we need and what they promised us.

We are also in trouble if we do not understand we are responsible to hold all of them accountable after they are elected. There is no way this could have happened if the people of this nation actually put their foot down and told congress to get to work for what they were elected to do and not ignore their duty.