For the second time in the past week, a new state poll of registered Republican Party voters in Florida show Marco Rubio gaining on Jeb Bush.
A Quinnipiac survey released this morning shows that Bush maintains a narrow, two percentage point lead over the younger U.S. senator, 20-18 percent.
Scott Walker is third with 9 percent support. No other Republican candidate is above 7 percent, with 13 percent undecided.
Quinnipiac also polled Republican voters in the swing-states of Pennsylvania and Ohio in this poll, and what they found was that Rubio has the best overall favorability rating in the Republican pack, 75–9 percent in Florida, 54–4 percent in Ohio and 57–5 percent in Pennsylvania. “The favorability rating and combined first and second choice numbers show that in this crowded pack of candidates Senator Rubio is making strong inroads with Republican primary voters and probably is the candidate who should be most heartened by the results of this poll,” says Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Poll.
Rubio also was right on Bush’s heels in a St. Leo University poll released last week (a poll that was derided by SaintPetersBlog editor/publisher Peter Schorsch). That poll showed Bush over Rubio 31-24 percent, a dramatic improvement for Rubio from March, when he trailed Bush 31-16 percent.
Bush did formally announce his candidacy for president three days ago in Miami and this poll does not reflect any potential bump he may be enjoying from that rollout.
From June 4–15 Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,147 Florida voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.9 percentage points, including 458 Republicans with a margin of error of +/- 4.6 percentage points.
