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.
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.
