Rubio has Double-Digit Lead in Latest Poll
After weeks of trailing Republican-turned-Independent Charlie Crist in a three-way race, Republican Marco Rubio is leading the Florida Senate race.
Via Sunshine State News: Marco Rubio Holds Double-Digit Lead in Senate Race
The survey of likely voters shows Rubio with 43 percent, independent Charlie Crist with 29 percent, Democrat Kendrick Meek with 23 percent and the remaining 5 percent undecided.
The Voter Survey Service poll surveyed 1,016 voters Sept. 1-5 and Sept. 7, and had a margin of error of 3 percent.
Worthy of special note:
“Among independents, Rubio even leads Crist narrowly, 38 percent to 36 percent,” Lee said. Meek garners just 16 percent of independents
UPDATE (James Joyner): Wondering whether this was some sort of polling anomaly — after all, Crist has seemed to be in a comfortable lead since announcing his independent bid — I checked the aggregation by the gang at RealClearPolitics. While Sunshine State News is a slight outlier, the polls all have Rubio in the lead and the race trending in his direction.
All of the recent polls have Rubio winning, most fairly comfortably. My strong preference here would be for Rubio to pull it off. Crist is a sore loser candidate in all but the technical sense; I hate to see him rewarded.
Is that your feeling about Joe Lieberman too?
Is there something wrong with a candidate, an incumbent, who may sincerely feel that his own party has been taken over by extremists, and who also feels that the electorate at large would prefer him, even if his party doesn’t, – something wrong with him testing his hypothesis by giving the voters a choice?
I have two problems with sore loser candidates, one of them fixable and one of them not. First, sore loser candidates create three-way races that prevent anyone from getting the majority. Therefore, it becomes about who is taking votes from whom rather than who the most popular candidate is. This is fixable, though, with general election runoffs. The second problem is that Democrats donated to Lieberman and Republicans to Crist with the assumption that they would, if victorious, represent and caucus with the party for which they ran. Taking that money and then running against said party is in poor taste, in my opinion. I actually give Lieberman a bit of a pass on this because he continues to caucus with the Democrats. Crist will also get a pass if he caucuses with Republicans, if he’s victorious.