Poll: Senate race tightens for both sides

By J. TAYLOR RUSHING
Capital Bureau Chief
Florida's crowded U.S. Senate race continues to taper into two-person Democratic and Republican primary battles, with front-runners Betty Castor and Bill McCollum still perched atop a new poll just five weeks before the primary election.

But the race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Bob Graham also is tightening. U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch is surging toward Castor on the Democratic side, and Republican Mel Martinez is closing the gap with McCollum.

Castor remains the choice of 38 percent of likely Democratic voters, up from 36 percent in February, according to a poll conducted July 15-19 by Maryland-based Research 2000 for the Times-Union and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The poll is a follow-up to a similar survey in February. The poll has a margin of error of 4 percentage points for national and state questions and 5 percentage points for Senate race questions.

"We're going in the right direction," said Castor, a former Tampa state senator and state education commissioner. "People know the experience I have, and that is beginning to show up. As president of the University of South Florida, we did a lot to build the high-tech corridor, so I can talk with authority about jobs, businesses and my involvement with health-care issues like the Healthy Kids program."

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