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Rubio up 32 points over Crist!? Campaign questions poll

Posted Mar 9, 2010 by William March

Updated Mar 9, 2010 at 01:58 PM

Gov. Charlie Crist’s Senate campaign is questioning the accuracy of a new poll showing him trailing Marco Rubio by 32 points in the Republican Senate primary.

The Public Policy Polling survey showed Rubio leading Crist among likely Republican primary voters by 60 percent to 28 percent.

“Support for Charlie Crist from conservative voters has pretty much evaporated,” pollster Tom Jensen said in a news release on the poll.

Crist has trailed Rubio in several recent polls, but not by any margin greater than 18 percent.

The survey included 492 likely Republican voters, questioned March 5-8. That should yield a 4.4-point error margin for the poll.

Public Policy Polling is a North Carolina-based political polling firm that handles mostly Democratic clients; the Real Clear Politics web site calls it Democratic-oriented. It uses automated dialing and push-button responses for polls. Traditional pollsters say that method is less reliable; pollsters who use the method say it’s just as accurate as human callers.

The Crist campaign called it “a Democrat poll designed to help Speaker Rubio, as they understand how easy it would be to defeat a lobbyist-politician in November.”

“Polls like this reflect the mood of the electorate, and the electorate is in a bad mood,” added spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

Tomorrow, the polling firm will release a general election poll which shows, Jensen said, that “Crist is a good deal more popular with Democrats now than he is with Republicans.”