FL-Sen: Rasmussen Dishes Out Some Tasty Cat Fud

And we’re here to serve it up – or hide it in the dryer. Rasmussen (12/15, likely voters, 10/19 in parens):

Charlie Crist (R): 43 (49)

Marco Rubio (R): 43 (35)

Some other: (5) (4)

Not sure: 9 (12)

(MoE: ±5%)

It’s a tie game. Maybe this explains why Charlie Crist didn’t celebrate his first anniversary with his wife – the campaign is clearly demanding too much from him.

66 thoughts on “FL-Sen: Rasmussen Dishes Out Some Tasty Cat Fud”

  1. If he stays in the GOP primary he’s going to get crushed.  I don’t see him cracking 40% against Rubio.

    He can’t pull out of the race and run for re-election either because McCollum sure as hell won’t step aside for Crist and Crist won’t beat McCollum in a primary.

    His only viable option seems to be run as an independent for Senate.  

  2. I expect Rubio to get around 70% to 80% of the vote in the panhandle among all the wingnuts that live there. Since it is likely the Rubio will beat Crist I think its time to draft Betty Castor now!

  3. when Rasmussen shows Democrats in trouble they have “an axe to grind” but when it shows Republicans eating their own, it’s taken to be gospel?

    They are a polling firm like any other and if they massage the data, they will be exposed like what happened with Strategic Vision.  

  4. omigod! 😀 We may actually have a shot at taking this seat if Rubio wins the primary. I defiantly was not expecting Rubio to get this much support this earlier. Time for a shake up in the Crist campaign/strategy?  

  5.  This is going to sound different from everybody but Rubio should peak soon. Rubio at first did poorly because no one knew who he was and now people are getting to know who he is. People will start to slink back toward Crist because people should think “Yeah, I liked Rubio but he seems a little too Conservative.” Also, I think alot of people who moved to Florida moved there because they wanted to get away from the…people who look like Rubio. I know people in Florida who are Liberal Jewish people from NYC and are not a fan of the people who look like Rubio. If Liberals in Florida can be like that, think of the Conservatives’ opinion. Rubio should have a very tough time winning their votes because I do not see many voters bringing themselves to be tolerant and vote for someone who looks like Rubio (side note, Betty Castor in 2004 did well in the Panhandle against moderate Republican Mel Martinez.) Also, Rubio may not even win Hispanics because the majority of Florida Hispanics are not Cuban and there is animosity between the groups. Florida however is not a ultra Conservative state (except for the Panhandle) which only casts about 10% of the Republican primary vote anyway. When you add the Jacksonville area, it gets to about 23% of the vote but this is still not very high.

    Overall, I do not see Rubio winning much east and south of Ocala except for Miami Dade County.  

  6. That Rubio wins the primary and general election. Then we have a teabagger senator instead of a rationale one.(By we I mean the united states, I don’t live on Florida)

  7. There’s no way Crist can beat Rubio in a Republican Primary and there’s no way Meek can win election in a Republican-leaning midterm. The only wrench into this would be Crist going Dem or third-party. The end.

  8. He’s obviously a naked opportunist. I think he’d have an easier time beating Meek in a Democratic primary than Rubio in the GOP one. What are the chances the GOP primary gets so ugly and unwinnable that he runs as a Democrat?

    No question Rasmussen skews their polls to be sensationalistic. I’d be surprised if Rubio is tied, but I don’t doubt he’s within low single digits of Mr. Crist.  

  9. I’d rather have Crist beat Rubio, than Rubio face Meek. I just think the optics and political environment do not portend a Meek victory. The thing with Rubio is that not stopping him now risks him becoming too big to defeat in the future (see GOP hopes of retaining IL Senate Seat in 2004 when Dems nominated a guy called Barack Obama).

    Rubio sells his conservatism very well and I just think it will be hard to nail him hard against Meek and once he’s in the Senate its next stop, 1600 Penn. It’s just not a risk I’m willing to take but that’s just me.

    As per Crist running as an indy or a Dem, that would most certainly guarantee a Rubio win and Dems would be unwise to pursue this option. Crist should go full negative against Rubio now and often. He has the money and there is litle downside and lots of upside ( basically, what Clinton should have done to cut off Obama’s legs in the fall of 2007, but as they say that’s history.) Indeed, I could argue that a bloodied but victorious Crist is better for Meek than a bloodied but victorious Rubio.

  10. …. peaking too soon.  Now that is has closed the gap with Crist, he will get a lot more scrutiny. But if he can win the primary then he wins the general, unless the economy is VASTED improved from what it is today.

    2010 is going to be a referendum on Obama, that sinks Meek unless Obama is much more popular in FL than he is now.  The economy has to improve for that to happen.  If it does, Meek has a shot. If it doesn’t, then brace yourself for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).  He then becomes the long-awaited heir to the Reagan legacy.    

  11. Look, I would LOVE to believe these numbers, but they don’t pass the sniff test and the poll has very obvious methodological problems common to Rasmussen that routinely produce outliers that are either catnip or panic-inducing for us, as the case may be.

    First, it’s only 431 respondents, with a 5% margin of error.  That’s very high.  You very rarely see a public polling outfit with so few respondents and such a high margin of error, unless they’re really trying to poll the general and the primary numbers are just an offshoot that they throw out there because they can.  Now, Rasmussen might be doing exactly that, but since they do dirt-cheap robocalls there’s no excuse for them not to do a lot more respondents to bring down that margin of error.

    Second, it’s a one-night sample.  This is perhaps the single biggest problem Rasmussen ALWAYS has, and it does, as noted above, produce the occasional batshit crazy outlier, which is exactly why no other polling outfit does one-night samples.

    Third, they’re using a likely voter screen for a primary election that’s 8 months away.  A likely voter screen is plenty difficult to do accurately in any case for a primary election, but for one 8 months away it’s virtually nothing more than guesswork.  Again, this is a routine problem with Rasmussen that they use likely voter screens for everything, no matter how far away, and it’s a component problem of all their polls except for near-term general elections.

    All this adds up to occasional stupid poll results.  The one I always like to point to is last year’s NH-Sen August Rasmussen poll that had Sununu suddenly up 52-45 on Shaheen, contradicting both all other contemporaneous polling and all other Rasmussen polling on that same race.

    So I just can’t take this FL-Sen primary poll seriously unless and until I see other polling corroborate it.

    And it’s worth noting the most recent poll or two before this latest Rasmussen effort actually showed Crist with a healthy lead, larger than some prior polls that showed Rubio having gained ground.

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