As Florida Governor Rick Scott approaches his 100th day in office next month, to call the first time politician “controversial” would be something of an understatement, if accurate.

So would the term “unpopular.”

In the first major poll since he rejected (again and again) $2.4 billion in federal stimulus money to construct a high speed rail line, a Public Policy Polling Institute poll released Tuesday showed Scott with a dismal 32 percent approval rating, with 55 percent disapproving.

But the headline that PPP issued in their release of the survey was that if Florida voters could turn on a time machine and go back five months, they would easily elect his vanquished Democratic party opponent from last November, former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, by a solid 56-37 percent margin.

The most decisive shift with Florida voters in the poll has been with independents, who went with Scott by a shocking 8 percent margin last November, but are now massively lined up against the former CEO by a 61-29 percent margin, a difference of 40 points.

“Rick Scott was elected by the thinnest of margins in one of the best Republican election

years ever,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.  “Since then he hasn’t

done much to win over either the folks who didn’t vote for him or the folks who

supported him because he was a Republican despite having some reservations about him

personally.”

This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2011.