The latest Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday morning shows Rick Scott and Charlie Crist in a dead tie at 42 percent, with Libertarian candidate Adrian Wyllie is in third place with 7 percent.
Crist gets 41 percent of independent voters, to Scott's 38 percent, with 11 percent for Wyllie. And among those who have already voted, Crist is up 42 percent to Scott's 38 percent.
Only 10 percent say they haven't made up their mind, which is certainly the segment of the electorate that the candidates were appealing to in Tuesday night's third and final gubernatorial debate in Jacksonville.
"Will nice guys finish last in the Florida governor's race? According to voters, there are no nice guys in this race, since neither Scott nor Crist are viewed favorably," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "The Florida governor's race challenges the idea that voters won't vote for a candidate they don't like. In the Sunshine State this year, voters definitely are voting for the lesser of two evils."
Crist gets a negative 42 - 47 percent favorability rating, compared to Scott's negative 40 - 48 percent, while 83 percent of likely voters do not know enough about Wyllie to form an opinion of him. Which means that this sentence in the Quinnipiac press release may say it all: "Florida likely voters dislike Crist a little less than Scott and still don't know much about Wyllie."
The survey was taken between October 14-20, meaning right during the middle of #FanGate, and it shows there was little residual damage done to either candidate from that media spectacle. Quinnipiac surveyed 984 likely voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.
