Zogby poll: Crist down 6 to Rubio; Meek at 17

October 5, 2010 · Posted in Elections, Florida, News and Current Affairs, Political News, Politics 

A new Zogby poll is the second this week to show ABR (“anybody but Rubio”) voters beginning to move in Charlie Crist’s direction. And the poll states what should have been obvious to anyone paying attention for a long, long time … Rubio can’t lose as long as he isn’t being attacked. Via SaintPetersblog:

According to a TCPalm.com/Zogby poll released Tuesday, 39.2 percent of the state’s voters favor Rubio, while 33 percent went with Crist and 17.6 percent are intending to vote for the Democratic congressman from Miami….Zogby International Chairman John Zogby said Crist is actually doing better than in previous polls conducted by his polling company. Crist had been down at 28 percent, while Meek has fallen from 25 percent.

Rubio has held steady.

“It’s hard to defeat Rubio if he holds at 38-39 percent, but it does look as if rather than gaining, Meek is losing ground, significant ground,” Zogby said.


The poll isn’t exactly fresh off the shelf — it was conducted Sept. 27 and Sept. 29, with 802 registered voters and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points. Rubio leads big with upper income voters, has a slight edge with women, the youngest voters and the oldest. Meek and Crist are splitting low income voters, and Crist and Rubio are splitting those with incomes somewhere in the middle (between $50,000 and $75,000.) Voters who feel the state is headed in the wrong direction favor Rubio, while those who think it’s on the right track or are not sure, are mostly with Crist. Unfortunately for Crist, 57.5 percent of those polled think the state is on the wrong track. As for party ID, here’s the breakdown:

Party-Democratic percentage
Marco Rubio 10.8
Kendrick Meek 36.7
Charlie Crist 40.1
Someone Else 0.7
Not Sure 11.6
Total 100

Party-Republican percentage
Marco Rubio 74.5
Kendrick Meek 4
Charlie Crist 15.5
Someone Else 2.2
Not Sure 3.9
Total 100

Party-Independent percentage
Marco Rubio 27.8
Kendrick Meek 9.8
Charlie Crist 49.2
Someone Else 1.6
Not Sure 11.7
Total 100

Interestingly enough, in the poll, Rubio gets 65.1 percent of conservatives (Crist gets 21.5 and Meek gets 8.7) but when it comes to liberals, Meek and Crist split them, 43 for Meek, 41.1 for Crist (somehow, Rubio gets 5 percent of liberals. Crist gets 47.3 percent of moderates, to 24.2 percent for Rubio and 14 percent for Meek.

Also interesting, while the pollsters didn’t query many of either group, Rubio doesn’t do much better with Hispanics than Meek does with Black voters. African-American voters in the poll went for Meek 57.5 percent to 23.5 percent for Crist and 9.8 percent for Rubio, while Rubio pulls just 50.9 percent of Hispanics to 28.7 percent for Crist and 11 percent for Meek. Rubio has a lead with white voters, 42.7 percent to Crist’s 34.5 and Meek’s 12.2. The pollsters also queried a small number of Cuban respondents, and ironically, Crist leads Rubio among that group, 52.3-47.7.

Lastly, the candidates are trading regions, with Rubio winning the I-4 corridor (Crist’s home base) and the North, and Crist winning in Rubio’s turn, South Florida.

Take the numbers for what you will. Polls have been all over the place this cycle, but Rubio seems to be settling in at about four in ten voters. As Zogby said, if the second and third place candidates want to chip away at that:

Meek or Crist “has to go very negative after Rubio and get his numbers down,” Zogby said. “He’s in the winning range.”

Otherwise, “One or the other opponent has to consider dropping out.”

Ouch. Well that’s not going to happen, so let’s get to the spin:

Meek spokesman Adam Sharon said polls the congressman’s elections staff has seen show the gaps closer than Zogby’s results.

“It’s a mathematic impossibility for Charlie Crist to win, he can not cobble together a coalition that never was and never will be,” Sharon said. “We’re seeing a much different race in other polls that show a much closer race.”

Danny Kanner, Crist’s spokesman said with the latest poll numbers, voters should see the contest as now just between the governor and Rubio.

“Congressman Meek has flat-lined in the high teens and Floridians now have a clear choice between the common sense, independent leadership of Charlie Crist and the tea party extremism of Marco Rubio,” Kanner said.

The Rubio campaign expects Crist “will do anything that the polls say” in order to bring up his numbers.

“Whether he’s been down 30 points, tied or up by double digits, Marco has always run on the ideas he believes are necessary to grow this economy, control spending and change the direction Washington is taking our country,” said Joe Pounder, a Rubio spokesman.

[Sidebar: why is Team Meek still talking mathematical improbability at this point? I mean, if Crist is locked out by the math, what does that mean for Meek? Dudes, get new talking points...! (Sigh) What's next? Another useless attack on Charlie Crist? Or maybe you guys could auction off another ride in a NASCAR vehicle! If I'm Kendrick Meek, I'm ready to sign them papers...]

At the end of the day, these polls are now mostly important because of their psychological impact on voters. The campaigns can’t really get much spin value out of them, except for Team Rubio, which is riding an air of inevitability into November. The only danger for Rubio is that his voters get complacent, assuming he’s going to win and thus losing a sense of urgency (or that tea partiers begin to see him as just another insider, and cool to his campaign — see this post on the “Snitker effect.”) Other than that, Rubio is in good shape, unless Democrats do what to many of them is the unthinkable, or Kendrick Meek pulls the ground game coup of a lifetime.

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