Charlie Crist holds narrow lead in Florida, poll shows

Florida’s bitterly tight race for governor is closing with a slight edge to Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist, a new poll indicates.

The survey, by Quinnipiac University, shows Crist leading incumbent Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, 43% to 40%, up from a tie in the same poll last week. It shows libertarian candidate Adrian Wyllie getting 8%.

A second poll released Thursday, by the Tampa Bay Times and the University of Florida’s Bob Graham Center for Public Service, found the two major candidates virtually tied: Crist 42%, Scott 41% and 7% for Wyllie, excluding those voters who refused to say whom they backed.

Florida has one of at least 10 races for governor that remain in toss-up territory. It’s an unusually high figure for this late in the election season and one that reflects the difficulty of a chief executive’s job at a time of continuing public unease with the economy.

In addition to Florida, Democrats hope to take seats held by Republicans in Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin and Kansas, and are backing an independent candidate against the Republican incumbent in Alaska. One other Republican, Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett, is almost certain to lose.

Republicans hope to pick up governorships in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois and Colorado.

Races in Georgia and New Hampshire are also competitive, although not as close, according to polling averages.

President Obama has been trying to boost the fortunes of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in some states he carried in 2012, hoping to motivate young and minority voters to show up at the polls.

Obama campaigned in Wisconsin on Tuesday for Democrat Mary Burke and Thursday was scheduled to go to Maine for Mike Michaud, who is in a three-way race with incumbent Paul LePage, a Republican, and Eliot Cutler, an independent.

The president is also scheduled to campaign in the next few days in Michigan and Pennsylvania, both states in which Democrats traditionally depend on a heavy turnout in minority communities.

Obama is not scheduled to appear in Florida, however. His appearance there would risk alienating moderates and independents whose votes Crist needs.

The Quinnipiac poll illustrates the dicey arithmetic. Crist leads in the survey in large part because of a 47%-29% edge among self-identified independents. In the previous survey that showed the race tied, Crist got 41% of independents. Both candidates get the votes of over 80% of their own partisans.

Among voters choosing either of the two major party candidates, Crist gets 45% of the white voters, the survey shows. By contrast, Obama took only 39% of white voters in narrowly winning the state in 2012, according to exit polls.

Since black and Latino voters are not expected to turn out as heavily as they did in 2012, Crist needs to get at least 42% or 43% of the white vote to win, Democratic strategists believe.

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