With Charlie Crist's announcement of his independent bid he is not only forever free of the indignity of being primaried out of his party, but is actually ahead of his erstwhile Republican challenger in general election polling between himself, his challenger Marco Rubio, and Democrat Kendrick Meek. Much of Crist's gain since his announcement has come at Meek's expense, and while Crist flies ahead, Meek seems to be lagging. The Crist surge has been so pronounced that yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a story suggesting that President Obama does not intend to support Meek too actively, in the interest of allowing the already-ahead Crist to defeat the avowed administration opponent Rubio. I humbly suggest that Mr. Crist's coronation as the next US Senator from Florida is premature.
Charlie Crist is vulnerable. He has so mishandled his primary situation that he is very clearly open to attack without any real defense. He insisted until a week before announcing his independent bid that he intended to run as a Republican. He left his primary for the perfectly logical reason that he was going to lose, yet the political opportunism and ideological relativity that making such a move implies does not resonate well with most voters. Consider the effect of Joe Sestak's ads in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, stating that "Arlen Specter changed parties to save one job, his." The more voters in Florida are reminded that Crist did something shockingly similar and has no excuse for it other than the fact that he was going to lose, his favorables and his numbers will go down. A higher unfavorable percentage implies two things; a lower percentage of people will commit themselves to Crist in a poll, and fewer undecideds will break for him in the election.
The most recent poll in the race, from Mason-Dixon, has Crist at 38 percent, Rubio at 32 and Meek at 19. However, over half of Crist's support comes from Democrats, and the governor actually leads Meek among his own party. Yet the Crist Democrats are not necessarily supporting him over Meek, as Meek has yet to go on the air and in the same poll almost half of Floridians did not know enough about him to express an opinion. It is natural and logical to assume that as Meek runs ads and gets his name to the wider Florida electorate, a much larger percentage of Democrats will support him, siphoning most of that support from Crist.
That assumption by itself makes the three-way race competitive. Crist has somehow retained his support among 18 percent of Republicans. Suppose that it is safe to assume that after the bruising and listless campaign against Rubio followed by Crist's abandonment of the party, this support is down to a hard core and will not significantly shift. Rubio, then, has access to only 80 percent of his own party (less than Republicans normally expect to get). His support from 19 percent of independents can be assumed to represent those conservatives who refuse to identify as Republicans.
If Rubio cannot move significantly beyond his conservative base of independent voters, then the remainder are to be divvied up between Crist, who has a strong independent base, and Meek. However, independents are notoriously less motivated to vote than those with a party affiliation. Those who do vote are disproportionately effected by impressions over policies, and if Crist is properly painted as an opportunist many will be unlikely to go for him. If Rubio gravitates toward the middle to increase his appeal, he will lose support from the right for his trouble.
That convoluted situation leaves Meek with the most to gain, as a both non-Crist-or-Rubio alternative for independent voters. He has moderated from the beginning of the campaign to increase that appeal. In that situation, Crist would become dependent on his support from Democrats to remain viable, and he is unlikely to maintain anywhere near his support among them once Meek is established as a credible alternative. If Crist takes equally from Republicans and Democrats, about 18 percent, Meek makes the race with independents competitive with Crist and Rubio remains in his ultraconservative box, Meek has a clear path to victory.
There are a lot of assumed and hypothetical points here, but the goal of this diary is not to predict the future so much as to point out that Charlie Crist's surge is superficial, and Meek, far from being an also-ran candidate next to Crist and Rubio, actually has a clear path and a strong chance of winning the race.