Florida Miscellany

-Barack Obama's poll numbers in Florida pretty closely mirror the results of the Presidential election in the state- 50% of voters approve of him, while 48% disapprove. Bill Nelson begins his third term in the Senate at a 43/40 spread, decent numbers but also ones that suggest his overwhelming victory in November might have had a lot to do with voters having a pretty dim view of his opponent Connie Mack IV. Marco Rubio continues to be the state's most popular politician with a 49/36 approval spread, outdistancing both Nelson and Governor Rick Scott.

-The White House has ruled out the option since we conducted our poll anyway but only 15% of Florida voters supported creating a trillion dollar coin to avoid the debt ceiling, while 54% were opposed to it. There was opposition to the idea across party lines with Republicans (8/71) and Democrats (23/36) both standing against it. Nevertheless the fact that 69% of Florida voters have an opinion about this concept that several months ago was very obscure is a tribute to how much its proponents got it out into the public dialogue.

-At least on January 17th, 2013 Hillary Clinton is the strongest candidate for President in Florida for 2016. Two of the most high profile potential Republican candidates for next time come from Florida, and Clinton bests both of them on their home turf: 50/46 over Marco Rubio and 49/44 over Jeb Bush.

Clinton has an 88/10 favorability rating with Democratic primary voters and is their overwhelming choice to be the party's 2016 standard bearer: 65% want her as their candidate, followed by 15% for Joe Biden, and 4% for Andrew Cuomo and Elizabeth Warren. No one else polls over 1%.

In the instance that Clinton didn't run things are wide open on the Democratic side- Cuomo leads the way with 22% to 15% for Warren with everyone else in single digits- Deval Patrick at 5%, Martin O'Malley at 4%, Kirsten Gillibrand at 3%, Mark Warner at 2%, and Brian Schweitzer at 1%. But the big winner is 'not sure' at 48%.

-Rubio has the edge over Bush right now on the Republican side. 62% of GOP voters in the state want Rubio to run in 2016, compared to 49% for Bush. Overall 31% of voters say they'd like Rubio to be their 2016 candidate to 26% for Bush, 11% for Mike Huckabee, 7% for Chris Christie, 5% for Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan, and 2% for Rick Perry and Susana Martinez.

Rubio's lead is based on his strength among voters describing themselves as 'very conservative.' He gets 39% with them to just 20% for Bush. The two are about tied when everyone else is factored in. One thing noteworthy in the crosstabs related to Christie is that he's the choice of just 1% of voters describing themselves as 'very conservative,' putting him in last place among everyone we polled.

Full results here

Comments

[Jello Mayberry]

Why don't you include Rick Santorum in your polls? Mike Huckabee is very unlikely to run, while Rick Santorum is very likely to run?

[Derek]

Yeah, I don't think that putting Mike Huckabee for your presidential polls in the future would be such a good idea, since he hasn't given any intentions of running again at least so far. I would replace his name with Rick Santorum for future polls.