The one number that Rick Scott and Charlie Crist should care about

It's 81,153

And as we talk about vote totals, ad buys, and self-funding in the bitter brutal contest between incumbent Gov. Rick Scott and challenger Charlie Crist, why is that number relevant?

Because that's the number of Florida voters who decided it wasn't worth their while to cast a ballot in the governor's race four years ago.

The contest between Democrat Alex Sink and Scott, which included a heavy dose of negative ads and lots of talk about HCA/Columbia and Medicare fraud, caused a spike in the number of so-called "undervotes." Undervotes are when voters choose, for whatever reason, to leave the ballot blank in a particular race.

The state tracks undervotes and overvotes as part of an exercise to make sure there aren't technical problems with the election.

And the report released several months after the tough 2010 election showed that the number of Florida voters who skipped the governor's race nearly doubled from what it was in 2006 when Jim Davis squared off against Crist.

That same report also showed that by contrast the number of voters skipping the U.S. Senate battle featuring Crist, eventual winner Marco Rubio and Kendrick Meek dramatically declined from what it had been during the 2006 U.S. Senate race.

In the end that number of 81,153 is pretty significant because it exceeded the final margin of a race that won by Scott with just 61,550 votes.

Much has been made in the last few days - by both the Crist and Scott campaigns - about how many voters are in the bank and whether the 2010 or 2012 turnout model is the best one to measure the current vote totals.

The numbers from Monday showed that 1.82 million people had already cast ballots and that the GOP had roughly an 8 percent edge. There's lot of analysis about what this means and if the numbers are showing that the Democrats are performing better than they did in 2010 when Scott narrowly won.

The undervote numbers, however, should cause everyone to pause for a moment.

Just because someone voted still doesn't mean that they filled in the oval for either Crist or Scott.

The 2010 numbers shows even voters casting absentee ballots, who are considered super motivated, can still skip a contentious race where both candidates are seen as unlikable or untrustworthy.

The numbers from four years ago show that 25,000 - or roughly 2 percent of all absentee ballots cast - did not contain a vote for governor. That was a higher percentage of blank ballots than votes coming either from early voting sites or on Election Day itself.

So while a lot of speculation can be made about the votes in the bank, this trend from four years ago is another reminder that it may be premature to render grand predictions just yet.

The Scott-Crist clash, with as much as $100 million being spent on television ads from their campaigns and their allies, may in fact generate as high or even higher rate of undervotes if voters are disenchanted with either of their choices (and choose not to vote for Libertarian Adrian Wyllie.)

The latest Quinnipiac University poll put Crist's favorable rating at 42 percent and Scott's at 40 percent. So according to pollsters, a majority of Floridians surveyed did not like either candidate.

Four years ago Quinnipiac's final poll before the 2010 election put Sink's favorable rating at 43 percent and Scott's at 34 percent.

Just something to think about in the final days.

Comments

[OrlandoChris]

I will be voting for Adrian Wyllie.

[dsrsbsvs]

So Rick Scott plead the 5th on MEDICARE FRAUD 75 TIMES?
Was it $1,000,000,000 of Taxpayers money his Company stole from MEDICARE while he was CEO, or was it $300, 000,000? Well you know John Lennon sung the song;" One Thing You Can't Hide is When You Crippled inside".