Turnout falls below expectations

Voting going smoothly in Florida

Obama hits McCain on the economy in his final Florida stop

Crist's top aide says Obama will win

New poll shows tight Florida race

John McCain and Barack Obama remained tied in the latest poll from Quinnipiac University.

Obama had a 47-45 percent lead over McCain, within the poll’s 2.3 percent margin of error. Six percent of voters were undecided in the survey, which was done between Oct. 27 and Sunday. The overall margin is unchanged from an Oct. 27 Quinnipiac poll.

Nuggets from the poll include:

--Obama leads among early voters, 51-38 percent.

--McCain leads among male voters, 49-45 percent.

--Obama leads among women voters, 49-43 percent.

--The two candidates are tied in the bellwether region of Tampa Bay,
with McCain leading 45-44.

--McCain’s strongest region is North Florida, leading 54-41 percent.

--Obama’s strongest region is Southeast Florida, leading 58-36 percent.

--McCain has a slight lead among voters 55 or older, 47-44 percent.

--Obama leads among voters under 35, 57-40 percent.

Peter Brown, the assistant director of Quinnipiac’s polling institute, said the “gender gap” is what is giving Obama a slight edge in Florida.

“He is winning women by barely more than Sen. McCain is winning men,” Brown said in a statement. “One potentially favorable omen for Sen. McCain’s potential to pull ahead is that Florida voters view him a tad more favorably and a little bit less unfavorably than they do Sen. Obama.”

This McCain sign will jog your memory

Talk about times you wish you had a camera.

Standing on the corner of Fruitville and Honore this afternoon, a McCain supporter gave drivers a thumbs up from under a sandwich board with this hand-drawn message:

"Don't tax me bro!" The Obama rising-sun logo was drawn in the "O" of "bro."

The phrase, of course, is a play on the words famously shouted last year by University of Florida freshman Andrew Meyer when police tasered him for causing a ruckus at a speech by guess who? Former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

"Don't tase me bro!" Meyer yelled.

(By the way, the line to vote at Fruitville Library, the closest voting site to above-mentioned intersection, was 2.5 hours long today.)

Candlelight vigil for Obama planned for Monday

Members of Sarasota Women for Obama are hosting a "Candlelight Vigil for Change" near the sculpture park at U.S. 41 and Gulf Stream.

The event is Monday night from 5 to 8 p.m., election eve.

Bring your own candles and prepare to hush. "Silence and stillness are powerful" the invitation says.

For more information call organizers Marguerite Jill Dye at 388-5098 or Marcia Lang at 812-2792.

More than 4.2 million Floridians have voted

Biden gives it the old college try

More than 34 percent of Floridians have voted

Realtors weigh in on Sarasota Senate, House race

The political lobbying arm for Florida's realtors spent $616,000 on late attack ads across the state, including mailers and televesion ads bashing two Sarasota Democrats.

Campaign finance reports released today show the Realtor's Political Action Committee funneled its attack money through the Council for Stronger Neighborhoods Inc., a soft-money electioneering group that was created just last month as an attack vehicle.

The Council for Stronger Neighborhoods purchased television ads and mailers attacking state Rep Keith Fitzgerald and mailers attacking Democrat Morgan Bentley, who is running in the District 23 state Senate seat.

John Rothell, the director of politial operations for the Florida Association of Realtors, said the association supports candidates that are most likely to advance the interests of realtors on issues such as lowering property taxes.

Nancy Detert, the Republican in the Senate race, is a former Realtor while Laura Benson, the Republican challenging Fitzgerald, is an active Realtor who chairs the Sarasota Association of Realtors government affairs committee.

Benson said she was screened by the Florida Association of Realtors political group before they weighed in on her race.

Rothell would not say how each candidate was selected for support.

He also would not comment on the substance of the ads, which Fitzgerald and Bentley have argued are "substantially false" in accusing them of wanting to raise taxes.

Bentley called the attacks "Tallahassee power politics."
Fitzgerald said they are outright lies.

Detert said she knew nothing about the mailers in her race while Benson said the ads run against Fitzgerald are true.

“I think they accurately reflect his record," Benson said.

While Democrats have accused the realtor group of playing partisan politics, Rothell said the Council for Stronger Neighborhoods is buying ads and mailers all over the state, including some that favor Democrats.

Florida inundated with presidential ads

Barack Obama’s television advertising blitz has continued in Florida, although the Republican National Committee is helping John McCain become more competitive on the airwaves in this critical battleground state.

Those are the latest findings in a new analysis from the University of Wisconsin, which shows nationally that Obama is on a pace to spend more than $100 million in TV advertising in October, the most ever spent by a presidential candidate.

The advertising numbers _ which tracked spending in the week of Oct. 21-28 but do not include Obama’s costly half-hour, prime-time broadcast this week _ also showed the importance both campaigns continue to place on Florida, the largest swing state.

Obama spent $4.6 million in Florida during that week to McCain’s $1.4 million in television advertising. But McCain’s message was bolstered by $1.5 million in additional advertising financed by the RNC.

McCain’s two top national advertising markets were in Florida _ where viewers saw more than 500 ads each in Tampa and Orlando and 367 ads in Jacksonville, which was McCain’s sixth-highest market in terms of ads being run.

Tampa was second only to Philadelphia in Obama’s national advertising barrage with some 685 ads run in the market that anchors the western end of the Interstate 4 corridor. West Palm Beach and Miami were also among Obama’s top ten national markets, with viewers seeing more than 500 of the Democrat’s ads in those two markets.

Combing Obama, McCain and other political ads related to the presidential race, Tampa was the top market in the country, with the viewers being hit with 2,485 ads during the week.

Five Florida markets were in the top dozen markets nationally that were being saturated with presidential ads. In addition to Tampa, viewers were being inundated with ads in Orlando (2,181), Miami (2,035), West Palm Beach (1,693) and Jacksonville (1,460).

Congressional surveys show positive signs for Obama

Dancing bear and Ms. Squirrel enter election fray

Nearly a third of Florida voters have decided

Nearly a third of Florida voters have already cast their votes in the general election.

Through Thursday, 3.4 million voters had either cast their votes at early voting sites or had filed absentee ballots _ representing 30 percent of the state’s 11.2 million voters.

Democrats continue to hold a lead among the early voters, with Democrats casting 45.5 percent of the early ballots to the Republicans’ 38.4 percent. Independents and third-party voters accounted for 16 percent of the early ballots.