Paxety Pages

In a snapshot taken 17 months before the election, Nelson is favored 53 percent to 36 percent over Harris, with 11 percent of voters undecided. The poll also found that Harris remains a polarizing figure to many of the state's voters.

"This is one of those rare cases where, going in, the challenger has higher negative ratings than the incumbent," said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., which conducted the poll for the Orlando Sentinel and WESH 2 News. "At this point, when you look at these numbers, I don't know how she's going to win this race."

As I've written earlier, it seems to me that Nelson has been working hard taking popular positions on State issues. Harris, of course, will attract all kinds of Democratic attention because of her purported role in the 2000 presidential election.

The lefty blogs are commenting heavily - Kos says Nelson is the Democrats most vulnerable incumbent (I'm not sure that's true), Flablog dismisses the "stronger than liberals think" arguement, and Florida Politics points out another poll last week had Nelson ahead 48-42.

I generally hate polls. I've never seen any particular sign that they are accurate predictors of who will win an election. I cite them here because of the reaction in some quarters.