Rasmussen: Crist Leads Rubio By 4%, 38-34

Don't worry too much -- Rubio crawled his way up from a far worse deficit before.

And half of that was just name recognition -- Crist had all of it, Rubio little. Now, Rubio got his name recognition going in the hotly contested Republican primary, but there are a fair number of Floridians who haven't engaged with Rubio yet. Everyone knows Crist, but not everyone knows Rubes. Yet.

Plus -- this is probably just mostly an announcement bounce:

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Florida Voters finds Crist earning 38% support to Republican Marco Rubio’s 34% and Democrat Kendrick Meek’s 17%. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.

Two weeks ago, before Crist announced his decision to run as an independent candidate, Rubio held a seven point advantage in the race.

Since then, Crist has gained eight (8) percentage points in the poll while Rubio and Meek have each dropped three (3) points. It remains to be seen if this is a temporary bounce or a lasting change in the race.

One problem here, though, is that as of yet, Crist appears to be a viable candidate -- and if he's viable, his support goes way up. That is, he garners not just the people who strongly prefer him, but those who weakly prefer him.

If he looks like a loser -- if a vote cast for Crist looks like a wasted vote -- he immediately sheds all those weak-preference voters, who move on to their second choice, and a fair number of the strong-preference voters, too.

Plus, if he makes Meeks the non-viable candidate, than most of Meeks' supporters desert him for Crist, for the same don't-want-to-waste-a-vote reason.

38% is Crist's high-water mark. His final number will be lower. If he starts to slip at all, it will end up being a lot lower.

posted by Ace at 03:49 PM

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