Quinnipiac Poll--final FL polls: Gov--Sink (D) 44% Scott (R) 43%; Rubio up by 14

MIAMI -- Republican Marco Rubio has a big lead in Florida's U.S. Senate race while the governor's race remains too close to call, according to a poll released one day before the election.

The Quinnipiac University poll released Monday shows Rubio with a 45 percent to 31 percent lead over Gov. Charlie Crist, a former Republican who is running as an independent in Tuesday's election. Democrat Kendrick Meek received 18 percent.

In the governor's race, Democrat Alex Sink leads Republican Rick Scott 44 percent to 43 percent.

Rubio, as expected, has a large lead among Republicans: 79 percent to 17 percent for Crist. But what has given him a substantial lead is his edge among independents: 42 percent to 35 percent for Crist. He is also benefiting from Crist and Meek splitting the Democratic vote. Crist has a 47 percent to 42 percent lead over Meek.

The poll is a reversal for Crist from one Quinnipiac released last week. In that poll, Crist had cut Rubio's lead to 7 percentage points.

"Rubio's center-right coalition is more than large enough to win given the three-way race," said Peter A. Brown, Quinnipiac's assistant polling director. "Gov. Crist, elected four years ago as a Republican, gets only 17 percent of the GOP vote and doesn't come close to the 50 percent of the independent vote he needs to win."

In the gubernatorial race, Sink has the edge among independent voters, 47 percent to 34 percent. As expected, both candidates have wide margins in their own parties: Scott leads 81 percent to 10 percent among Republicans and Sink leads 83 percent to 5 percent among Democrats. The race has been close for weeks.

Brown said he is surprised by the lack of a gender gap, even though Sink would be the state's first female governor. Scott leads by 1 percentage point among men, while Sink leads by 1 percentage point among women.

The key, Brown says, will be whoever gets the majority of the 9 percent of the likely voters who said they are undecided.

Sink, the state's chief financial officer, is better thought of by likely voters, with a 43 to 40 percent favorable rating. Scott gets a negative 39 to 50 percent rating.

Scott, a Naples businessman, has been dogged throughout the campaign by his past leadership of Columbia/HCA, a hospital conglomerate that paid a record $1.7 billion fine to settle federal charges of Medicaid and Medicare fraud. Scott, the company CEO at the time, was never charged with a crime and says he wasn't aware of any wrongdoing.

Quinnipiac surveyed 925 likely voters between Oct. 25 and Sunday. The phone poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/01/1902445/poll-rubio-has-big-lead-sink-scott.html

Arrgh. :mad:

Especially in close races.