Public Policy Polling’s new Florida Senate poll finds that the race is pretty much undefined, with the candidates largely unknown and “undecided” leading the primaries on both the Democratic and Republican sides.
A 39 percent plurality of voters are undecided, with Alan Grayson getting 33 percent to Patrick Murphy’s 27 percent, thanks largely to a 44/21 advantage with voters who describe themselves as “very liberal.” The Democratic hopefuls are better known than the Republicans, but Murphy still has only 48 percent name recognition and despite his high national profile even Grayson is only familiar to 55 percent of primary voters.
The general election matchups lean slightly Democratic at this point, with Murphy generally faring better in them than Grayson. Murphy leads all the Republicans — it’s 40/35 over both DeSantis and Jolly, and 41/35 over Lopez-Cantera. Grayson slightly trails both Jolly (39/36) and DeSantis (37/36), but does lead Lopez-Cantera 41/34.
One thing that could put a wrench in the whole Senate race is if Rubio makes a late pivot to run for re-election as his presidential campaign struggles. He would start out with pretty decent sized leads over both Murphy (46/40) and Grayson (48/38) if he ended up making that change in plans.
