The new survey of the Florida Senate race by Public Policy Polling (D) shows Republican Marco Rubio continuing to lead the three-way race. And it also suggests that if Democrats want to defeat Rubio, their best bet would be for the Dem nominee Rep. Kendrick Meek to fall by the wayside, and for people to throw their support behind GOPer-turned-independent Gov. Charlie Crist.
The numbers for the current three-way race: Rubio 44%, Crist 33%, and Meek 21%. The survey of likely voters has a ±4.6% margin of error. In the previous PPP poll from late August, Rubio had 37%, Crist 36% and Meek 13%.
Then poll also asked two follow-up questions: What if the race were just Rubio vs. Crist, or just Rubio vs. Meek? The result with Crist was a 46%-46% tie. On the other hand, with Meek as the sole anti-Rubio candidate, Rubio still leads by 48%-41%.
“Marco Rubio’s been sitting on a solid lead for weeks now,” writes PPP president Dean Debnam. “It will stay that way as long as the Democratic vote remains pretty evenly divided between now and the election. Unless Crist or Meek can break away with Democrats down the stretch this one will be an early call on election night.”
The TPM Poll Average gives Rubio 44.4%, Crist 28.6%, and Meek 21.6%.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
Facebook Conversations
Questions about commenting with non-Facebook accounts like Yahoo, or other concerns? Click here to read the TPM Commenting FAQ.