Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a poll Tuesday showing that Gov. Charlie Crist, an independent candidate in the race for the U.S. Senate election, is the clear leader in the race.
Crist came in with 35 percent support, while former House Speaker Marco Rubio, the likely Republican candidate, pulls second at 29 percent and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democrat, places a distant third with 17 percent. Libertarian candidate Alex Snitker is fourth with 4 percent. The poll found 15 percent undecided.
When Meek is replaced by primary rival Jeff Greene, Crist has an even larger lead. Crist takes 38 percent while Rubio remains at 29 percent. Greene did worse than Meek, taking only 13 percent. Snitker had 3 percent. The poll found 16 percent undecided.
One factor helping the governor is that he was the only candidate whose approval ratings are higher than his disapproval numbers. The poll found that 44 percent approved of Crist while 41 percent disapproved. Rubio pulled 31 percent favorable but 46 percent unfavorable.
The poll found that Floridians were still in the dark on the Democrats and Snitker. While only 15 percent of the people surveyed had a favorable impression of Greene and 26 percent an unfavorable one, 60 percent of Floridians were not sure what they thought of the billionaire candidate. The same held true of Meek, despite his years in Congress -- 18 percent favorable, 27 percent unfavorable while 55 percent were not sure.
Unfortunately for both Greene and Meek, Snitker’s numbers were in the same ballpark as those of the Democrats -- 16 percent favorable, 20 percent unfavorable and 63 percent not sure about the Libertarian candidate.
The poll found that a plurality of Floridians think, if elected, Crist should caucus with the Democrats. While 37 percent of those surveyed said Crist should return to the Republicans, 43 percent said Crist should caucus with the Democrats.
The poll of 900 Floridians taken between July 16-18 has a margin of error of +/- 3.26 percent.
“This election is especially exciting because Crist could prove to be an example of a successful independent with support from across ideological borders,” said Dean Debnam, the president of PPP. “It will be interesting to see if he can maintain enough support from Democrats to win the race, following the Democratic primary.”
Some of the campaigns reacted to the poll on Tuesday.
Despite their candidate’s similar numbers to their rival‘s, the Meek team sent out a release arguing that the poll showed that Florida Democrats were not taking to Greene despite his aggressive media campaign.
“A new poll released today showed why Jeff Greene has resorted to attacking Kendrick Meek in television ads,” wrote the Meek campaign in a release on Tuesday. “Even after spending millions of dollars of his ill-gotten gains, Greene is seen unfavorably by a plurality of Florida Democrats.”
The Crist team, on the other hand, trumpeted their lead on their campaign Web site.
While saying they hoped to do better in future polls, the Snitker campaign took some solace in the poll. “The most impressive thing is the fact we’ve done this with zero advertising dollars,” said Adrian Wyllie, Snitker’s media director. “It is exclusively word of mouth. We hope it’s a trend that will continue."
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com, or at (850) 727-0859.