Quantus poll puts Moody up 7 in Florida as our model eases to 30 in 100 for Democrats

A Quantus Insights survey of 733 likely voters in Florida, fielded September 8-10, puts Republican Ashley Moody at 50.4 percent and the Democrat at 43.0 percent in the state's special Senate election. That is a Moody lead of 7.4 points, wider than the sampling error on a survey of that size would account for.

Our model now gives the Democrat a 30 in 100 chance of winning the seat, with Moody at 70 percent. The mean projected margin is R+3.3, and the middle of our simulated range runs from R+13.3 at the 5th percentile to D+6.7 at the 95th.

The direction of that move is worth separating from its size. Our previous run, earlier the same morning, had the Democrat at 34 percent and a mean margin of R+4.5 — a slightly wider Republican edge on average. What changed most is the spread. That earlier run put the 5th-to-95th percentile range at R+22.4 to D+13.4; the new one is less than half as wide. With less uncertainty around a race our model still centers on a Republican margin, fewer simulations cross to the Democrat, so the Democratic win probability falls even as the average margin tightens.

Nationally, our generic-ballot average stands at D+6.7 across 24 polls fielded in the past 45 days. In the Senate, our model gives Democrats a 47 percent chance of winning control and Republicans 53 percent, with a mean of 50.1 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control; Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to them. Florida sits on the Republican side of that ledger in most of our runs, and the new Quantus numbers did not change which side it sits on.