Gov. Rick Scott can’t be happy with two polls released this week showing him in major trouble as he prepares to run next year for a second term. But one Republican in Tallahassee should be smiling: Anitere Flores, R-Miami, in the running to replace disgraced former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll.

Flores makes sense. 

According to the Quinnipiac University poll out on Wednesday, former Gov. Charlie Crist, who in the last 2 1/2 years went from Republican to having no party affiliation to jumping over to the Democrats, is now the front-runner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Crist destroys Scott in the poll. He takes 50 percent when matched up against the governor, who trails with 34 percent.

Crist beats Scott up and down and inside out in all sections of the state -- with both genders and all races, including whites. Crist takes 51 percent of women surveyed; only 29 percent of them support Scott. Crist beats Scott by more than a 2-to-1 margin among Hispanic voters, too, taking 53 percent, while only 26 percent back Scott. In populous Southeastern Florida, a whopping 67 percent are backing Crist, a pathetic 19 percent stand behind the incumbent governor.

Drilling deeper into the poll, there’s clearly a gender gap on Scott. He’s upside down with both genders but Scott generally does better with men than women. While 37 percent of men see him favorably, 45 percent of them see him as unfavorable. As bad as that is, Scott’s still doing much better with men than women. Only 29 percent of women see him as favorable, as opposed to 47 percent who see him as unfavorable.

While Scott does better with white voters when matched up with Crist, strangely enough the governor does better with Hispanics when the poll asked about Scott’s favorability. Forty-six percent of whites view Scott as unfavorable and 36 percent see him as favorable. Scott does slightly better with Hispanics with 37 percent of them saying they have unfavorable opinions of the governor while 33 percent see him as favorable.

The same trend can be seen when the poll turns to the governor's approval ratings. Scott is upside down across the board, but the same patterns hold. He does better with men (-7) than women (-19). But Scott also does better with Hispanics (-3) than whites (-8).

The Quinnipac poll shows these groups are not averse to backing Republicans. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio does well in the poll, up +18 with men, +16 with women, +20 with whites and an impressive +23 with Hispanics. The same poll shows more Hispanics (55 percent) than whites (51 percent) think Florida is on the right track.

Democrat pollster Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a poll on Tuesday that also shows Scott in bad shape. Only 33 percent of voters in the PPP poll approve of Scott; 57 percent disapprove. Crist wallops Scott in this poll, beating him 52 percent to 40 percent.

There are major differences between the PPP poll and the Quinnipac poll on gender and race. There’s not much of a gender gap in the PPP poll with Scott underwater by 23 percent with men and 25 percent of women. The PPP poll has Scott upside down with whites by 14 percent and in severe trouble with Hispanics, with 71 percent seeing him as unfavorable and only 24 percent saying they have favorable views of him. The PPP poll has Crist beating Scott with whites by 1 percent, routing him with Hispanics by 26 percent. The poll also has Crist beating Scott with both genders, winning men by 6 percent and women by 16 percent.

Looking at the Quinnipiac poll, there’s no way Scott can be competitive in 2014 if he is losing women voters by more than 20 percent, takes a quarter of the Hispanic vote and has around a fifth of the vote in crowded Southeastern Florida. Going with the PPP poll, Scott has to make a major push to turn around his numbers with Hispanics.

In the 2012 elections, 17 percent of Florida’s votes were cast by Hispanics. President Barack Obama took 60 percent of them while 39 percent supported Republican Mitt Romney. Obama did even better across the nation, taking 71 percent of Hispanics; 27 percent went for Romney.

Scott clearly needs to make up ground with Hispanics if he wants to compete in 2014. The PPP poll shows it might be out of reach, but there is hope for Scott getting more Hispanic support in the Quinnipac poll.

Enter Flores, who rose up in the House Republican ranks before crossing over to the Senate in 2010. Flores is a Cuban-American who served as Gov. Jeb Bush’s education policy chief. As a staffer and eventually as a member of the Florida House, Flores often focused on education issues. She could certainly help Scott do better with female voters and, as a Cuban-American, she should be able to win back some Hispanic voters.

Coming from Miami-Dade, Flores can help turn around Scott’s numbers in Southeastern Florida which, according to the Quinnipiac poll, are awful. The fact that Flores is only 36 is icing on the cake for Scott.

Adding Flores to the 2014 ticket won’t solve all of his problems to be sure. His numbers are bad and winning a second term looks like an extremely tough assignment at the moment. But choosing Flores could help him stop the bleeding with Hispanics, women and voters in Southeastern Florida. While nobody casts his or her vote on who the lieutenant governor is, having Flores on the ticket should provide Scott a little bit of a boost.

From March 13-18, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,000 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points. PPP surveyed 500 Florida voters from March 15-18. The margin of error for the overall sample is +/- 4.4 percent.



Tallahassee political writer Jeff Henderson wrote this analysis piece exclusively for Sunshine State News.