Tampa Bay Times: “Despite roughly 500 full time campaign staffers spread across Florida to help Clinton win forever close Florida, party leaders and activists across the state are fretting about the campaign’s ground game. Even Clinton campaign staffers in other states are quietly buzzing about the Florida campaign struggling to meet its goals for voter registration and other outreach benchmarks.”

Tampa Bay Times: “Of the 534,000 new voters added to the rolls this year, Democrats say more than 180,000 are Democrats and nearly 156,000 are Republicans. Less than 4 percent of the nearly 63,000 new African-American voters are Republican, and just 16 percent of the new Hispanic voters are Republican.”

“How many of the 24 field offices that Team Trump said in early August they’d open this month in Florida are now up and running? None yet, according to Republican officials in the state.”

“The Republican presidential nominee has one of his campaign’s weakest ground games in his most crucial swing state, several political insiders and donors told Bloomberg Politics. Now, some Republicans are worried it’s getting too late to recover, with vote-by-mail ballots going out starting in late September and Democrats pledging a big push in early voting.”

Steve Schale: “Most states are places. Think about Texas, or even a state like Iowa, there is a sense of place to it, a commonality of experience – or as marketers might say, almost a brand. Most states have it. Florida really doesn’t.”

“Florida isn’t a place in the same sense. It is a political circle, drawing 20 million people from vast, and I mean vast experiences and cultures into one spot. And almost everyone here has come from somewhere else.”

“Florida is the new Ellis Island, except our ships come as cars and planes, from inside the borders of the country, and outside. Over the next 15 years, we might add as many as 5 million more residents, grow to as much as 30% Hispanic, with a total population of well more than 50% coming from what are typically considered ethnic minorities.”

A Tampa Bay Times Florida Insider Poll this week finds that three in four expected Clinton will win Florida.

“At the same, however, an even more overwhelming majory of the political consultants, fundraisers, academics, and the like surveyed -almost 80 percent – expect Republican Marco Rubio will win reelection in November.”

A new OnMessage poll in Florida shows Donald Trump just ahead of Hillary Clinton in the presidential race, 47% to 45%.

For comparison, the HuffPost Pollster average shows Clinton ahead, 48% to 41%.

A new SurveyUSA poll in Florida shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by four points, 46% to 42%.

A new Mason-Dixon poll in Florida shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by three points in the critical battleground state, 45% to 42%.

A new Quinnipiac poll in Florida finds Donald Trump leading the GOP primary race with 46%, followed by Marco Rubio at 22%, Ted Cruz at 14% and John Kasich at 10%.

In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders 60% to 34%.

A new Monmouth poll in Florida finds Trump leading with 44%, followed by Rubio at 27%, Cruz at 17% and Kasich at 9%.