Marco Rubio Gets Terrible News In Latest Florida Senate Polling

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) can’t blindly count on re-election, according to new polling conducted by Change Research on behalf of the Democratic-leaning organization EMILY’s List.

In the polling, which measured voters’ attitudes in the expected general election match-up between Rubio and Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), the two contenders were tied. Each received 46 percent of the support, with seven percent saying they weren’t sure and two percent indicating they would not vote. The polling doesn’t simply reflect an artificial lean towards the Democrats among the survey respondents: Ron DeSantis, Florida’s infamous Republican governor, was considerably more popular than Rubio among participants in the survey. In the poll, nearly half of likely voters — who constituted the overall pool of respondents — indicated a favorable view of DeSantis. Only 36 percent of overall respondents said they viewed Rubio favorably. There was a gap between the two of 13 percentage points.

There was a chasm between Rubio and DeSantis of 23 percentage points among Republicans sharing favorable views of the two figures, although Rubio had more respondents from the GOP indicating they were either neutral or didn’t know. A full 95 percent of Republican poll participants shared a favorable view of DeSantis. For Rubio, that level was just 72 percent. These considerable gaps suggest that Demings could win even if Florida maintains its recent Republican lean. Rubio just doesn’t have the same base of support as DeSantis, who’s basically leading the charge for Republicanism in Florida as the midterms approach. Another set of recent polling, from a pair of Democratic-leaning Florida-based organizations, also found Demings and Rubio tied, with each candidate getting 45 percent of the support.

Recent fundraising data also shows that Demings is out-raising Rubio for the general election by a considerable margin. For the general election face-off, the Demings campaign reported raising $4.7 million in the period from July 1 to August 3 — and in that same period, Rubio’s campaign raised only $1.9 million. The Demings campaign’s fundraising was also ahead of Rubio for the second quarter, which ended June 30. During those three months, Demings raised $12 million while Rubio gathered just $4.3 million. Around the country, Democratic Senate contenders are relatively consistently out-raising their GOP counterparts by substantial margins. In addition, other states show more blatantly favorable political environments for the Dems. Recent polling out of Arizona had Sen. Mark Kelly (D) ahead of Trump endorsee Blake Masters by 14 percent among likely voters. John Fetterman, the Dem Senate pick in Pennsylvania, also repeatedly showed up in polling leading his GOP challenger by double-digits.