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Poll: Gap narrows in GOP Senate race

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By WILLIAM MARCH

wmarch@tampatrib.com

Published: October 22, 2009

TAMPA - A new poll shows Marco Rubio cutting substantially into Gov. Charlie Crist's lead in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.

The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute survey shows Crist's lead in the race down to 15 percentage points among registered Republican voters - Crist with 50 percent, Rubio at 35 percent, and 14 percent undecided or giving other answers.

The poll also shows Crist performing much better than Rubio among all voters against their likely Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek.

Crist led Meek 51 percent to 31 percent; Rubio trailed Meek 36 percent to 33 percent.

The poll also shows Republican Bill McCollum narrowly ahead of Democrat Alex Sink in the Florida governor race, 36 percent to 32 percent, with 31 percent undecided or giving other answers.

The survey found President Barack Obama with 48 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval ratings in Florida, a slight improvement.

"A real race now"

The Quinnipiac and other recent poll results, plus a recent uptick in Rubio's fundraising, are relevant to the question of whether the comparatively unknown Rubio can seriously challenge the popular governor for the party's Senate nomination.

"You'd have to conclude it is a real race now, even though Crist seems unbeatable," said retired University of South Florida political scientist Darryl Paulson, a Republican and Crist supporter.

"Obviously, Crist himself believes he's in a real battle," Paulson said, citing a series of radio ads and personal appearances in which Crist has responded to Rubio's advances by emphasizing his own conservatism.

The Quinnipiac poll sampled 1,078 registered voters. It has a 3 percentage point error margin. The Senate primary questions were asked of 396 Republican voters, yielding a 4.9 point error margin.

Despite the small sample and the error margin for the primary, the results were similar to those of a poll done recently but not publicly released by the Florida Chamber of Commerce. The leaked results show Crist with a 14 point lead, 44 percent to 30 percent.

Those outcomes are a major change from polls done through the summer in which Crist's lead over Rubio was up to 30 percentage points.

"Marco Rubio has awakened the Republican primary voters, and this is a race now," said Marian Johnson, the chamber's political strategist.

Crist backers played down the polls' significance.

"The governor continues to hold a good, solid lead, and the campaign's going very well," said Greg Truax, Crist's Hillsborough County chairman.

"There will be changes in the polls through time," Truax said. "But we know consistently the governor holds around 60 percent among Republicans because of a good solid record of a lower state budget, tax cuts, school rankings up and crime down."

More popular outside GOP

Both polls also showed Crist with enviably high popularity and job approval ratings, though lower than some of his previous heights.

They also showed he is better liked by the growing no-party segment of Florida's voter population than he is in his own party.

Publicly released portions of the chamber's poll showed Crist with a 62 percent favorable job performance rating among all voters. No-party voters gave him 68 percent approval; among Republicans, the approval figure was 63 percent.

In the Quinnipiac poll, 65 percent of no-party voters and 63 percent of Republicans said they have a favorable opinion of Crist.

That suggests, Paulson said, that Crist could have an easier time winning a general election than winning his party's primary, in which only registered Republicans can vote.

Rubio campaign spokesman Alex Burgos disagreed, saying the Quinnipiac poll doesn't prove Rubio would be at a disadvantage in the general election.

"It would be a contest between two candidates that are largely unknown," Burgos said. "After running against Charlie Crist's powerhouse fundraising machine, we'd welcome the opportunity to take on Kendrick Meek's even more liberal record."

Reporter William March can be reached at (813) 259-7761.

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