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As of Sunday, more than 122,000 votes had been cast in the special election for Congressional District 13 in Pinellas County. The Republican advantage in votes cast to date has grown to more 4,623 votes. Presumably, a lot of ballots come in today and tomorrow. We had been arguing that the Republican lead in mail-in votes cast was below where Republican nominee David Jolly needed it to be, but there's no question after the past five days he heads into election day with the momentum and with some wind at his back (Just as Obama had in 2012 when early...

When David Jolly beat Alex Sink in a recent special election for a Florida congressional seat, the knee jerk reaction from the GOPe’s pet pollsters was to immediately warn the Republican rank and file that Jolly didn’t win because of Obamacare. “Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?” came to mind. Phonies like Karl Rove pontificated about how winning elections requires more than simply getting on the right side of issues voters care about and hammering that message home. Hey, who knew there was more to winning elections than supporting the things voters want and opposing...

Jeb Bush is thinking about running for president in 2016. Like, really thinking about it. He's the headliner at an event hosted by mega donor Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas on Thursday. He was actively involved in Rep. David Jolly's special election victory in Florida earlier this month. And he is breaking with his party's orthodoxy on Common Core. So, as Jeb mulls a bid whose advice does he seek? Who does he trust to give him an unvarnished view of what the race might look like? Well, everyone even close to Jeb insists that he largely keeps his own...

David Jolly's campaign says he owes his victory to a "Honeybadger." That's what NRCC officials call their new voter database--- tirelessly built from scratch--a system they argue was essential to Jolly's surprising win in Florida. In details shared exclusively with National Journal, leaders at the NRCC described a first-of-its-kind political operation deployed on behalf of a candidate. Led by Honeybadger, a continually updating system that integrates real-time data with existing voter files, they say they were able to track voters they had to target, discover what messages would motivate them to go to the polls, and project exactly how much...

Listening to what Karl Rove has to say about elective politics–or most everything else–is about as inviting as swallowing a few raw eggs. He is so consistently wrong that only the consistently wrong GOPe can stand to listen to him. Half-truths and ignoring reality comprise his inexcusable M.O. Almost before the last bit of confetti fluttered to the floor at David Jolly’s victory party last Tuesday night, Rove was leading the GOP establishment’s charge to “caution against thinking he won because of Obamacare.” Despite Democrat Alex Sink’s support of the mess Barack Obama made of our once great healthcare delivery...

Republican David Jolly has defeated Democrat Alex Sink and Libertarian Lucas Overby for the U.S. House District 13 seat. With all precincts reporting, Jolly received 48.43 percent of the vote, while Sink received 46.56 percent of the vote. Overby received 4.83 percent of the vote, with 8,799 votes cast for him. The candidates were vying for the House seat previously held by Congressman C.W. Bill Young. Young, who died in October, served from 1971 to 2013. The Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections said voter turnout for the special election was just about 39 percent. Most of those - about 26...

Republican David Jolly narrowly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in the special election for Florida’s 13th District on Tuesday in an expensive race watched closely by both parties as the midterm election season kicks into high gear. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Jolly beat Sink 48.5 percent to 46.6 percent, according to The Associated Press. Both Democrats and the GOP plowed millions of dollars into the swing district race in hopes of an election year boost. The results appeared to vindicate the strategy of the GOP, which focused its attacks on linking Sink to Obamacare and managed to win with...

Their frustration had been mounting for weeks. But by late January national Republicans had had it with David Jolly, their candidate in Tuesday’s nationally watched Florida congressional special election. The candidate had just told the state’s top political reporter that he disagreed with an ad the party was airing against his Democratic opponent — a spot paid for with the nearly $500,000 the GOP had already spent on Jolly’s behalf. “Are you f—-ing kidding me?” a senior National Republican Congressional Committee official told a Jolly staffer over the phone, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. Would the Jolly...

Voters in this stretch of beach towns and retirement communities provide the first 2014 campaign test of whether Democrats can counter GOP attacks on the president’s health care overhaul by accusing Republicans of threatening popular benefit programs for the elderly.Democrat Alex Sink and her allies in the spirited race to replace the late Rep. Bill Young in the U.S. House have spent millions of dollars on TV ads ahead of Tuesday’s special election painting Republican David Jolly as an extremist who wants to privatize Social Security and gut Medicare. Jolly has responded with a TV spot featuring his elderly mother...

Their frustration had been mounting for weeks. But by late January national Republicans had had it with David Jolly, their candidate in Tuesday’s nationally watched Florida congressional special election. The candidate had just told the state’s top political reporter that he disagreed with an ad the party was airing against his Democratic opponent — a spot paid for with the nearly $500,000 the GOP had already spent on Jolly’s behalf. “Are you f—-ing kidding me?” a senior National Republican Congressional Committee official told a Jolly staffer over the phone, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. Would the Jolly...

We’ve got a little Congressional special election going on over on the west coast of Florida to fill the seat left by the passing of Florida Statesman Bill Young, Chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Republican David Jolly is running against Liberal Democrat Alex Sink. And the liberal media hypocrisy in covering politics is in full flower. Sink makes frankly bigoted comments on the subject of immigration reform, but of course the media doesn’t call her out on it. During a heated debate against Republican candidate David Jolly on Tuesday, Sink said “We have a lot of employers over...

A new poll shows Democrat Alex Sink has a good-sized lead over Republican David Jolly in the race to replace Bill Young in Congress. The poll shows Sink with a seven-percentage-point lead over Jolly. The poll was commissioned by WUSF Public Media, Bay News 9 and the Tampa Bay Times and surveyed 603 registered voters in Congressional District 13 - all who say they're likely to vote in the March 11 election. Forty-two percent of those surveyed are planning or leaning toward voting for Sink, with Jolly picking up 35 percent. Libertarian Lucas Overby is way back of the pack,...