TAMPA — President Obama’s Florida approval rating was
well above water just after SEAL Team 6 canceled Osama’s ticket.
Not now. A Quinnipiac poll released last week shows 44 percent of
the 674 registered Florida voters surveyed approved of Obama’s
performance in office, while 51 percent disapproved. In May the
same poll showed 51 to 43 percent approval.
As for whom Floridians told Quinnipiac they would like to
see as president after 1/20/13, Obama and Mitt Romney are tied at
44 percent. In May, 47 percent of respondents said Obama deserved
to be re-elected. In the latest poll, only 42 percent say they want
another four years of him. Florida’s 29 electoral votes — 10.7
percent of the votes necessary to take possession of the key to the
Oval Office wash-room — are in play.
Looking at the fine print of the poll, we learn that
Florida independent voters, the backbone of Obama’s two-point win
in Florida in 2008, now disapprove of Obama by a margin of two to
one. Not good news for Himself. This is change the conservative
side in Florida can believe in.
Romney leads the Republican presidential field in Florida,
according to this poll. But he’s the choice of only 23 percent.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, yet to announce, is second at 13
percent. Michele Bachmann, the belle of the ball in Iowa, so far
gets only six percent support in Florida. But whenever Republicans
select their flag-bearer, that candidate will have the advantage of
not being Obama, a man more and more Floridians are finally seeing
as a failed president.
If there’s no overwhelming choice in the Republican
presidential sweepstakes in Florida so far, there even less
agreement in the race for the Republican senatorial nomination. The
hands-down leader in this race to choose a candidate to face a weak
incumbent liberal is “Undecided” with 53 percent. A distant second
in the senate race at 15 percent is retired Army Colonel Mike
McCalister, who has only recently gotten into the race, has
collected little money, and has appeared mostly before Tea Party
groups.
Former U.S. Senator George LeMieux, who served the last 16
months of Mel Martinez’s Senate term, came in third at 12 percent.
Restaurateur Craig Miller was the choice of eight percent. Former
majority leader of the Florida House, Adam Hasner, has attracted
the support of national conservative figures looking for the second
coming of Marco Rubio. But he only attracted six percent of voters
in this poll.
Twelve-year incumbent Bill Nelson, a down-the-line
supporter of the Obama agenda, also lost a little ground in the
latest poll. Over the two polls, the percentage saying Nelson
deserves to be re-elected has dropped from 48 to 45. The percentage
saying he shouldn’t be re-elected rose from 30 to 38.
All the Republican candidates are running on unambiguously
conservative platforms. Any of them would be the un-Nelson. Another
candidate or two may hop in on the Republican side before lineup
cards are final next year. But don’t expect any mushy, moderate,
Charlie Crist Republicans. Conservatism is clearly the philosophy
of choice this cycle among Florida Republicans.
So there will be a clear ideological choice next year for
the Senate seat. Nelson has the advantage of being defined as a
moderate by a left-stream state media that will be solidly in his
corner. The challenge facing conservatives will be to tie Nelson
publicly to his record — which includes whooping up and voting
for: ObamaCare, cap and trade, the “stimulus” slush fund, and a
host of other liberal measures Floridians say they don’t like. It’s
the conservative’s race to lose, in a state where people tell
pollsters by a margin of more than two to one that they are
conservatives.
With more than a year to go before the real ballots are
cast, these poll numbers are useless in predicting either the
presidential or senate horse races. But they do show the largest
swing state in the nation slowly swinging back, at least for now,
to red.
