McCollum leads Senate hopefuls in Quinnipiac Poll

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has a sky-high 65 – 24 percent approval rating and he is as well liked among Florida voters as President Barack Obama, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today, Most of the potential U.S. Senate candidates are unknown to most voters.

Had Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink decided to run for the U.S. Senate, she would have had a small early lead in the Democratic field, and run almost even with the best-known GOP potential candidate, Attorney General Bill McCollum, with 35 percent for Sink and 36 percent for McCollum, the independent Quinnipiac University poll finds.

Although McCollum holds a wide lead in name recognition among the GOP candidates, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV, son of the former senator with the same name, runs closely to him in a trial heat of GOP contenders and also is viewed very positively by the party-rank-in-file.

“No one has surfaced as a likely Democratic opponent for Gov. Charlie Crist and that’s not surprising given how well he is thought of by Floridians,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“It’s impressive at this time of national Obamamania that Gov. Crist’s favorability rating is slightly higher than that of the new President. Of course, it’s still more than 21 months until the 2010 election, but Charlie Crist looks like a very strong candidate for re-election.”