Meek trails as GOP primary turns ugly

While Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio wage an increasingly bitter battle for the Republican Senate nomination in Florida, frontrunning Democratic Senate nominee Kendrick Meek appears to be suffering from his party’s slipping approval ratings.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state shows Meek trailing Crist by 16 points and Rubio by 20 in general election match-ups, margins that are virtually unchanged from a month ago.

While Crist, the state’s current governor, trails former House Speaker Rubio by the widest margin yet among Republican voters, he leads Meek 48 percent to 32 percent. Eleven percent prefer some other candidate, and nine percent are undecided.

Rubio now holds a 51 percent to 31 percent lead over Meek. Seven percent like another candidate and 11 percent remain undecided.

The candidates are running for the seat originally vacated by GOP Senator Mel Martinez. Last August, Crist as governor named his chief of staff, George LeMiuex, to serve the remainder of Martinez’s term, but LeMieux is not running for a full term.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush recently gave a hand to Rubio’s campaign by bashing Crist’s decision to endorse the federal stimulus package.

“Gov Crist is a talented guy,” Bush said in a NewsMax interview. “He’s about the nicest person I ever met in politics. But there's one thing he's done that I just find unforgiveable. That I'm aware of he is the only statewide political leader that embraced the stimulus package when Republicans were fighting to suggest an alternative.”

Meek’s numbers have been stalled in the low 30s for months, suggesting that he is still feeling the backlash like many Democratic candidates nationally from voter unhappiness with the bad economy and the national health care plan.

Thirty-six percent of Florida voters currently describe their personal finances as good or excellent, while 21 percent say their finances are poor. But 50 percent expect their own finances to get worse versus 16 percent who say they’ll get better.

Athough U.S. President Barack Obama carried Florida with 51 percent of the vote in the 2008 election, just 45 percent of voters in the state approve of his performance as president, with 31 percent who strongly approve. Fifty-four percent disapprove of the job he is doing, including 44 percent who strongly disapprove. This marks a slight improvement for the president from a month ago and is now roughly comparable to his overall job approval ratings nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Both Republican hopefuls carry male voters by sizable majorities against Meek but win women by much smaller margins. Voters not affiliated with either major political party prefer the GOP candidates by roughly 30 points.