Marco Rubio, the Republican nominee for Senate in Florida, is leading the state’s strange three-way race to fill an open Senate seat. According to a new CNN/Time poll of the race — which pits Rubio against Democrat Kendrick Meek and independent Charlie Crist — Rubio leads Crist 36-34. Meek comes in third with 24% of the vote.
Past polling has shown Crist and Rubio swapping leads in the contest while Meek has generally run well behind the two. The 24% he pulls in the new CNN/Time poll is one of the highest totals Meek has drawn in a public poll for months, coming on the heels of Meek’s strong win in the Democratic primary and subsequent boost in media attention and name ID. Meek has been targeting Crist heavily in the past couple weeks, joining with Rubio in multiple attacks calling the independent candidate a hypocrite. It looks like his strategy has been working — most likely to Crist’s detriment.
The TPM Poll Average shows Rubio with 35.5% of the vote, Crist with 34.3% and Meek with 19.3%.
The CNN/Time survey of 899 registered voters was conducted Sept. 2-7. The margin of error is 3.5%.
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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