The race that Crist passed on

Charlie Crist gave up the opportunity to run for re-election as Florida Governor to run for Senate, but instead got run out of the Republican primary and has since left the party entirely. I wonder what might have been had he just run for Governor instead.

Instead though, Republicans Bill McCollum and Rick Scott are fighting to challenge Democrat Alex Sink in November. Rasmussen polled these matchups.

I hate the carpet bomb general election polls in general, but with two Republicans and one Democrat I can live with it. And in the case of Florida, the key takeaway so far is that Sink runs markedly better against newcomer Scott than against McCollum. In fact, it’s a seven point swing.

But it’s not an even swing. Scott himself only gets two fewer points than McCollum, but Sink gains five. So yes, McCollum leads 43-35 (MoE 4.5) for a healthy 81% chance of leading. But Scott’s only up 41-40 for that slim 54% lead probability.

What may be driving this is that Scott (barely) has the lowest Very favorable rating of the three candidates (14 vs 15 and 15), but the highest Very unfavorable (14 vs 13 for McCollum and 10 for Sink). Since Scott also has the highest Not Sure rate (34 vs 20 for McCollum and 29 for Sink), Scott seems to be immediately disliked by a number of voters even as others are still learning who he is.

Are Democrats particularly motivated against him, perhaps? Or maybe a set of Independents? Time will tell I suppose.