Rep. Grayson Has Huge Lead in Republican Primary

No, that's not a typo. According to a poll of registered Republicans last week, Congressman Alan Grayson has an enormous lead in the Republican primary for Florida Congressional District 8 (FL-8).

Of course, Grayson is a Democrat. Yet Grayson is far and away the leading choice among registered Republicans in FL-8. In fact, he has almost twice as much support among Republicans as all his Republican opponents combined.

In the poll, Grayson won the support of 27.8% of registered Republicans. None of Grayson's 13 opponents scored higher than 3.7%. Their combined performance was only 14.5%. The remaining 57.7% of registered Republicans were undecided.

30.1% of registered Republican women support Grayson. And Grayson has the support of 25.5% of registered Republican men.

Grayson also has an enormous lead in name recognition. 76.9% of Republicans know Grayson; none of his opponents scored higher than 15.1%. 81.4% of Republican men know Grayson, and 72.4% of Republican women know him.

Grayson received high marks from Republicans for his Constitution initiative. Over half of all Republicans said that they were more likely to vote for Grayson because he passed a resolution urging high schools to teach the Constitution, and he had distributed tens of thousands of copies of the Constitution throughout the district.

Interestingly, Grayson is more popular among Republicans than Republican Governor Charlie Crist is. 42% of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of Crist, far more than those who have an unfavorable opinion of Grayson.

Asked to comment, Congressman Grayson said, "it's like I've been saying: People like a Congressman with guts. They want someone who works hard, pays attention, and gets things done. For goodness sake, we increased federal competitive grants in this district by 98% in our first year. That extra $100 million benefits Republicans, Independents and Democrats equally. People of every political persuasion want to see action to help solve their problems, and that's what they're seeing from us."

When asked if he might run in the Republican primary, Grayson said, "as this poll shows, if I did, then I would win."

The poll was conducted on Feb. 26th. There were 324 respondents, all registered Republicans in FL-8. The margin of error was 5%. The poll was conducted by Middleton Market Research.

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