Poll: Gov. Charlie Crist has narrow lead over tea party favorite in Florida
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As politicians and pundits mull whether Tuesday’s primary results indicate a conservative drift in the American electorate, the latest poll in Florida shows that Gov. Charlie Crist, forced out of his party by tea party activists, is slightly ahead in his independent race to become senator in Florida.
Crist, once the darling of the GOP but now running as an independent, is ahead of Republican Marco Rubio 37% to 33% in the Senate race with Democrat Rep. Kendrick Meek at 17%, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday.
The poll is based on interviews with 1,133 Florida voters carried out from June 1 to 7. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
With victories around the country, notably in Nevada, the conservative discontent that is the loosely organized, multi-headed tea-party movement had a good primary night. One of the early successes and still a marquee battle this year is the Senate race in Florida.
Crist, a popular governor, had a lock on the GOP nomination until discontent pushed him out of a primary that he feared he would lose to Rubio.
“Gov. Charlie Crist leads Marco Rubio by a nose in the Senate race. Obviously, there is a long time until November, but the governor is doing very well among independent voters, almost as well among Democrats as Meek and better among Democrats than Greene,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “With Rubio getting two-thirds of the Republican vote, the fate of Gov. Crist, who switched from Republican to independent six weeks ago, depends heavily on his ability to appeal to Democratic voters.”
The poll also showed that President Obama’s approval rating in the state continued to drop in part because of the sharp swing against offshore drilling in the wake of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
Floridians oppose an increase in offshore oil drilling by 51% to 42%, a 48-point swing from the 66% to 27% support in an April 19 survey. That was a day before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank, precipitating the leak that poured millions of barrels of oil into the gulf waters and threatened beaches, including Florida’s.
-- Michael Muskal
