Tweet
Gov. Charlie Crist, running as an independent, holds a narrow lead in the three-way Florida Senate race, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. The race is still very close and Crist’s fate might rest on who wins the Democratic primary August 24: Kendrick Meek or Jeff Greene.
Quinnipiac (6/1-7)
Kendrick Meek (D) – 17%
Marco Rubio (R) – 33%
Charlie Crist (I) – 37%
DK/NA – 11%
Jeff Greene (D) – 14%
Marco Rubio (R) – 33%
Charlie Crist (I) – 40%
DK/NA – 11
If Greene manages to win the primary, some of the Democratic vote shifts to Crist, according to the poll. That small shift could be decisive.
Looking at the cross tabs, Crist’s support is built on a strong base of independents, significant percentages of Democrats and, to a lesser degree, Republicans.
In a three-way race with Meek, Crist gets 28 percent of Republicans, 37 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents. Against Rubio and Greene, Crist gets 28 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents. By contrast, Rubio gets just 7 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of independents in the Meek matchup and 6 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of independents with Greene in the race.
As the race starts to focus more on issues (like what party Crist would caucus with), Crist’s challenge is going to be juggling to keep his bloc of Republican supporters while not alienating his Democratic voters, and vice versa.
I still think Crist’s best and possibly only path to victory is to depict the Democrat in the race as the spoiler. He needs to make the case to the Democratic-leaning electorate that he is the only one who can beat Rubio and that a vote for the Democrat is a wasted vote, helping Rubio win. For that strategy to work, Crist needs to cement his place in the electorate’s mind as the front-runner. If Crist’s poll numbers start slipping, I suspect they will quickly snowball downhill.
If Meek is able to rally all the Democrats to his side with a base-heavy strategy, he could possibly win if Crist and Rubio split the right/center share of the vote. There’s no path for Crist without netting a significant number of the Dem-leaning voters. The outcome of the Democratic primary will be crucial to Crist.
8 Comments
Isn’t Crist going to be tarnished by the GOP fundraising scandal before November? Couldn’t he actually be indicted?
I’m still thinking that Meek might pull this off, but then I thought Danny Tarkanian would be the sleeper winner last night too. I guess that only works if you are Creigh Deeds with two fighters slugging it out above you in a Virginia Democratic primary.
All three Crist Meek and Rubio have scandal like problems. Be interesting to see how it does shock down though. The FL GOP party fund issues might possibly take out Crist and Rubio.
The “dead girl/live boy” theory may well yet be tested in Crist’s case. Just sayin :)
How long can they keep that young man out of state and under wraps, do you suppose? The one who claimed to have had an affair with Charlie, who worked for Katharine Harris and then, suddenly, disappeared into the ether?
I mean, Mike Rogers’ phone number isn’t unlisted. And the young man’s money has to run out sometime.
The scuttlebutt here in FL is that the Demo establishment is switching their support from Meek to Crist in the hope that Crist will win and that he will caucus with them in the Senate. We’ll see if it works. Crist has about 10 days left to decide whether or not to veto HB 1143, a restrictive abortion bill that would require women seeking one to look at a sonogram of a zygote first. If he doesn’t veto it he has no chance of getting enough turncoat democrats to vote for a turncoat repuglican.
Let’s see Meeks is tight with slick willie BClinton right,
now what is the possibility that Meeks is a corporate Dem…..
Look before we go any further is he a DLCer,that’s all
you need to tell us Jon Walker.
Anyone Clinton is backing ain’t good for working people…
BClinton the guy who put outsourcing on steroids & ruined many American
lives…signed the Telco act ,repealed Glass-Steagall act…And campaigned for Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont….and was just in Arkansas campaigning for another corporate whore,Blanche Lincoln…..folks this is not the kind of candidate(Meeks) you need to be supporting.
Progressives have no dog in this fight.
pardon the spelling… Meeks should read Meek.
What’s the difference,congressman Meeks from Queens NY
is another corporate dem…
The devil you know….lifelong Dem voter here, Crist Has my vote. I spent far too long waiting for JEB to end his reign, conventional rap down here is if you like JEB, you will love MARCO.
Crist vetoed the ultrasound and “hold teachers accountable” bills which strangely are popular with a large segment of Florida’s (got to hold SOMEONE accountable), kind of like a Biblical thing for these folk, read “death penalty.”
Also, after Clinton and Obummer, I’ll never vote for a Dem again.