Published on October 24, 2024 at 5:00 am
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A new poll shows Republican U.S. Rep. Aaron Bean with a 7-point lead over Democratic challenger LaShonda “L.J.” Holloway in the race to represent Congressional District 4 in the U.S. House.
Forty-eight percent of people surveyed said they would vote for Bean, according to the poll released today by the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida.
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Forty-one percent said they would vote for Holloway, and 12% said they did not know.
The race also includes a write-in candidate, Todd Schaefer.
The poll, conducted Oct. 18 and 19, included 337 likely voters contacted by telephone. It has a margin of error of +/- 5.84 percentage points.
Bean’s previous race
Bean’s lead is substantially less than his winning margin two years ago.
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“Aaron Bean won by a whopping 21 points in the 2022 midterm election, the first election in the
newly redrawn CD4 after Florida’s hotly contested redistricting,” said Michael Binder, faculty director of the research lab and a professor of political science at UNF.
“Turnout among Democrats in 2022 was atrocious, at less than 50% statewide,” Binder said. This time around, a presidential election and a competitve U.S. Senate race are expected to drive up Democratic turnout.
“It’s still looking like another Bean victory in CD4, but maybe not by as wide a margin as we saw two years ago,” Binder said.
Bean won his seat after the Legislature redrew the previous Congressional District 5, a majority Black district that included Jacksonville. The new District 4 lumped the most Democratic parts of Duval County with Republican strongholds in Nassau and Clay counties.
Overall, the redistricting resulted in four Republican-leaning districts in North Florida and led to months of court challenges.
An analysis by Jacksonville Today in November 2022 showed that Bean’s win helped Republicans flip the U.S. House.
Randy comes to Jacksonville from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where as metro editor, he led investigative coverage of the Parkland school shooting that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for public service. He has spent more than 40 years in reporting and editing positions in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and Florida.
