Scott trails Crist by 12 points

Rick Scott's approval numbers have seen no improvement over the last two months, even after his decision to allow Medicaid expansion in Florida. 33% of voters continue to approve of the job he's doing to 57% who disapprove. Although his overall numbers are the same he has seen a slight improvement with Democrats (from 21/71 to 23/69) and a slight downgrade with Republicans (from 49/38 to 46/42).

Scott continues to trail Charlie Crist by double digits in a hypothetical match up, 52/40. That's just a slight improvement for him from January when he was down 53/39. Crist, who still has a 28% favorability rating with Republicans, wins over 29% of the Republican vote and also has a narrow lead with independents at 47/41. Crist still isn't as popular as he used to be- a 46/43 favorability rating- but that's good enough against the backdrop of Scott's unpopularity to give him a pretty substantial early advantage.

Scott does poorly against some other potential Democratic candidates too. He trails Pam Iorio 44/37 and Alex Sink 45/40. He does at least lead Nan Rich 42/36.

Democrats though pretty much seem to be on board with Crist. He has a 66/24 favorability rating with Democratic primary voters, and 50% of them would like for him to be their candidate next year compared to 21% for Sink, 9% for Iorio, and just 3% for Rich. 16% aren't sure who they'd like their standard bearer to be next year.

Scott might actually have more trouble winning his party's nomination than Crist has with his. Only 42% of Republican primary voters say they want Scott to be their candidate again next year to 43% who say they would prefer someone else. It's moderate Republicans who really want to dump Scott (34/55) while ones identifying as 'somewhat' (43/38) or 'very' (46/42) conservative tepidly support him. Scott does at least lead named potential primary challengers at this point- it's 46/27 over Pam Bondi, 48/24 over Adam Putnam, and 54/13 over Ted Yoho.

2014 is obviously a long way off, and Scott did a good job of coming from behind in both the primary and general elections in 2010. But for now his path to reelection continues to look incredibly precarious.

Full results here

Comments

[Spencerfleury]

Ted Yoho? Seriously? There's actual serious talk about Ted Yoho for governor?

[Jay]

Funny that moderate Republicans are the ones that most want someone other than Scott in a primary...why not just vote for moderate Republican Crist?

[smartalek]

"why not just vote for moderate Republican Crist?"

Because even "moderate" Publicans can apparently no longer bring themselves to vote for one of their own if he sports a Dem label.
See: Obama, Barack Hussein.