Posted on 05/17/2010 12:23:38 PM PDT by FTJM
Almost two weeks ago, Charlie Crist rode his declaration of independence to his first lead ever in the three-way Florida race for the US Senate. It didn’t take long to dissipate. Rasmussen’s latest polling on the race now shows Crist fading sharply to second place, losing twelve points in the gap in as many days:
Charlie Crist received a bounce in the polls when he left the Republican Party to run for the U.S. Senate as an independent. New numbers suggest that the bounce for the governor is over.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Florida finds Republican Marco Rubio with 39% support, while Crist earns 31% of the vote and Democrat Kendrick Meek trails at 18%. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided.
Two weeks ago, just after Crist announced that he was running as an independent, he held a 38% to 34% advantage over Rubio.
At the time of the last poll, I pointed out the ways in which Crist’s rise had no long-term support. He mainly got the boost from independents despite their earlier support for Rubio. However, on the issues, Crist matched up poorly with unaffiliated voters, especially on offshore drilling and ObamaCare repeal.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
*applause*
I hope Charlie Loafers comes in 3rd place, maybe even 4th, behind the libertarian.
Thank Crist!
It should drop to single digits.
This closest liberal has been pulling the fleece over Floridians eyes for years. Time to send him home with his ‘new’ wife and let him seek gainful employment with his lib friends.
What’s really impressive here is that the two “Republicans” total 70% with the lib not even able to crack 20%. That’s a pretty seismic shift.
Patriot 39%
Liberal 31%
Commie 18%
You mean his new ‘wife’
Yes, ‘his’ new wife ... as I wrote it. Thought I read that within the last year there is a new wife in his life.
Maybe he is not in such a ‘slump’ at home, having a up hill battle. Course guess he doesn’t have to pretend he’s a conservative at home either.
Crist will decline further as Rubio consolidates his support as the Republican nominee. Crist will be hard put to net more than 20 per cent of the vote in November.
.. AMERICA NEED THE SPECTOR OF CRIST!!!
I hope he somehow gets sued for keeping GOP donations.
Time for Florida to play poll games - - - again.
I would think voting machines tend to make voting for an independent a tad more difficult in many states. (In other words it may be a bit more difficult than voting a straight ticket on many machines.)
LMAO!
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Good news...
I will repost my comments from the last post about this poll from earlier today:
I think this poll is very good news - beyond just the obvious - and I think the dynamics of the race that we’re likely to see indicate that Crist has pretty much maxed out his support level and has nowhere to go but down.
Rubio’s 39% represents the conservative base in Florida. Florida seems to mirror the nation as a whole, politically, and conservatives make up the plurality in this state. Let’s not forget, even after the drubbings that the GOP took in 2006 and 2008, that 15 out of 25 of Florida’s delegation to the House is Republican. Until recently, the Governour was a Republican, and the LtGov still is. One of Florida’s Senators is a GOPer, and the Dem Senator is relatively moderate, for a Democrat. Between the conservative Republicans and the conservative Southern Democrats, Rubio probably has the Redneck Riviera, Jax, the SW coast, and the I-4 Corridor locked up.
Rubio has nowhere to go but up. He has his base locked in, and is now in the enviable yet tricky position of being able to move his rhetoric towards the centre a bit, so as to try to pick off more moderate and independent voters from Crist, balancing this with not ticking off his own base, of course.
Meeks is a left-wing wacko. His 18% is basically made up of Florida’s black voters (blacks make up ~16% of Florida’s population) who reflexively vote Dem, and the hardcore of the left-wing activists in the Democrat Party - the radical gay activists, the union leaders, the environuts, the MoveOn.org/Code Pink crowd, etc. He is in a sort of mirror image situation with Rubio - he can try to moderate his rhetoric and image, peeling off left-leaning independents, while not offending his base.
For both of them, this means taking votes away from Crist, and only Crist.
Crist’s support seems to be made up of two types - RINOs and more moderate-to-soft-left-leaning Dems/Indies who are unhappy with the far left candidate their state Party picked for them.
Hence, Crist is left with a very shaky 31%. Either way he moves to steal votes, he will lose them from the other end of his spectrum of supporters. If he moves left to vote-grab from Meeks, he risks losing the more conservative-leaning independents and Democrats who would *prefer* to vote for an Indie over a GOPer, but who will only go so far with it. If Crist moves left, a lot of these will jump ship to Rubio. Likewise, if Crist goes right, he loses left-leaning independents back to Meeks. If he stays exactly where he’s at, he still loses.
Rasmussen’s internals that are reported (sorry, I’m not a Gold Standard Superduper Special Contributor to Rasmussen’s Beer Fund, so I don’t get to see the particulars) says that Republicans appear to be moving back to Rubio, and that independents are doing the same. Both bode ill for Crist and well for Rubio, obviously.
Further, as the election moves closer, I think we will see a lot of Crist’s more left-leaning Democrat support bleed back to Meeks, just as the more RINOish Republicans appear to be coming back to Rubio. Party identification is a powerful thing, and moderate left Dems will probably end up voting for the devil they share a party label with over the one they don’t.
Hence, both Rubio and Meeks will pick up support at Crist’s expense. What this all means is that if he doesn’t have to sell if to pay off his campaign expenses, Crist will be able to retire to his yacht and take that cruise around the Caribbean he’s always wanted to take.
That’s just my take on it, at least.
I don’t think you understand. Your quotation marks are misplaced. It’s not ‘his’ new wife, or his ‘new’ wife, it’s most definitely his new ‘wife’. Understand? In other words, his ‘wife’ is a WINO because ‘ol Charlie don’t swing that way.
The “Bagel Belt” which stretches from Miami Beach up along I-95 and the Turnpike to Jupiter at this point is still waiting to see if Crist will move far enough to the left for them to support him without guilt. My parents live in PBC and, trust me, do NOT want to see Meek as their party’s nominee.
I don’t know how he swings ... but she sure looked ALL female in the pics I saw.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.