Public Policy Polling is back today with its full-fledged Florida Senate general election polling, and it's more or less bad news for Charlie Crist.
Yesterday it was announced PPP's new numbers show Crist losing the Republican primary by a whopping 32 points. In fact, as the numbers stand now, there's no conceivable way Crist can win the Senate seat. If in some dream world Crist ran as a Democrat, the numbers show the Dems have more of a chance of beating Rubio by running Meek than Crist.
If he runs as an independent, he actually siphons off more votes from presumed Democratic nominee, Kendrick Meek. Rubio would win with 34 percent to Crist's 27 and Meek's 25.
If Crist ran as a full-fledged Democrat, he still couldn't beet Rubio. He'd trail 43-34. Though that might be because only 54 percent of Democrats would vote for him. If it did come down to this unlikely situation, it's possible he could do better with Dems after some campaigning.
But Crist would win if he made it to the general election as a Republican. In fact, he does much better against Meek than Rubio would. Crist leads Meek 46-33.
Rubio leads Meek by a thin five-point margin, 44-39, and Meek leads with independents.
"Because there are a lot more undecided Democrats (20 percent) than Republicans (12 percent), the race is realistically probably even closer than 5 points. Rubio benefits from a more unified party with 77 percent of Republicans already committed to voting for him compared to 67 percent of Democrats who say they'll vote for Meek. But Meek leads 41-34 with independents, a very rare outcome in this political climate when independents are usually leaning strongly toward the GOP," writes PPP, which we should mention tends to be more aligned with Democrats.
