Trump in front

Florida poll shows Trump in front, with Bush’s help

By Marc Caputo

Donald Trump remains the clear frontrunner in Florida and, a new poll of likely Republican voters shows, he can partly thank the unlikeliest of people for that: Jeb Bush.

With the former Florida governor in the crowded primary for president, Trump leads with a solid 27 percent support, with Sen. Marco Rubio a distant second at 16 percent, followed by Dr. Ben Carson (15 percent), and Sen. Ted Cruz and Bush (about 12 percent each), according to Viewpoint Florida’s newly released survey of 2,047 likely Republican voters in the state.

Without Bush in the race, Trump has a problem: He gets no added benefit, but Rubio’s support jumps up so that he almost ties the frontrunner, 24-27 percent. The rest of the GOP field is essentially unchanged.

Without Rubio in the race, however, Trump’s lead ticks up a percentage point, to 28 percent. But Bush doesn’t then come in second. Instead, Carson and Cruz vie for second place and Bush remains in fourth, with 17 percent support.

“These figures don’t bode well for Jeb or the theory of his electability against Trump,” said Randy Nielsen, a West Palm Beach Republican consultant who conducted the poll and disclosed that he favors Rubio.

“What this poll says to conservatives like me is that if you want to stop Donald Trump, Jeb is not your guy in Florida,” Nielsen said. “The data show it’s Rubio.”

The poll also showed that more than 42 percent of Bush’s voters favored Rubio as a fallback. But fewer than 25 percent of Rubio’s voters wanted Bush as a second choice while about 25 percent said they favored Cruz as their No. 2.

Those results, Nielsen said, show that Bush hurts Rubio — and in doing so helps Cruz and Carson. And that undercut the Bush campaign’s notion that knocking the senator out would help Bush.

“The poll drives a stake in the heart of that theory. It clearly demonstrate they’re barking up the wrong tree,” Nielsen said. “If anything, it’s going to come to a point where they realize or hear the clarion call from the Republican establishment that you’re the problem, Jeb — not Marco.”

This Florida survey, the 10th in a row finding Trump on top, resembles other recent Florida polls that also show Bush in third or fourth place. Reflecting many national surveys, most of the recent Florida polls show that, as Bush has slipped, Carson and Rubio have risen. Now Cruz, on the heels of a strong debate performance Wednesday, might be showing more traction in Florida as well.

The surveys, in addition to the well-publicized staff shakeups and Bush’s shaky debating, underscore the depth of Bush’s troubles. With so much establishment Republican support in his home state, Florida was supposed to be Bush’s base, and his firewall. Now Bush is in danger of getting an honorable mention.

As his poll numbers have sunk, Bush has rebooted his campaign and announced spending cutbacks. He embarks on a three-city Florida tour in Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.

The electorate and media have greatly changed since Bush last appeared on a ballot, in his 2002 re-election. Then, he was a boom-time governor and brother of a popular wartime president. But only 46 percent of the Republicans who voted in that race are on the ballot today. And the conservative mood is stubbornly anti-establishment.

“They are the new generation of Republicans. And Rubio can make essentially the same case that Bush did when he ran for governor,” Brian Crowley, the Palm Beach Post’s former political editor who covered Bush’s elections, wrote on his Crowley Political Report last week.

“This presidential campaign is a reminder that Jeb Bush has only faced one serious opponent in his campaigns and he lost,” Crowley wrote, referencing Bush’s unsuccessful battle to unseat Democratic governor Lawton Chiles in 1994. “The fact is Bush's electoral successes have had more to do with the weaknesses of his opponents. Bush has not run against a Republican in more than 20 years.”

Among self-described Florida conservatives, who accounted for about 70 percent of Viewpoint Florida’s poll, Trump led with about 27 percent support, followed by Carson (17 percent), Rubio (16 percent) and Cruz (15 percent). Bush ran in fifth, with 10 percent support. Former Hewlett Packard executive Carly Fiorina, the only other GOP candidate named in the poll, was in fifth among conservatives (4 percent, about the same number as she received overall in the survey).

What makes Viewpoint Florida’s poll different is its mammoth size and low 2.2 percentage-point margin of error. Nielsen said his group, which phoned actual likely voters culled from the Florida voter file, took a large-sample poll because Viewpoint Florida uses what’s nicknamed “robo-polling technology,” in which respondents register choices by pushing phone prompts on their key pad. Because robo-polls miss cellphone voters, the larger sample size enables the pollsters to interview a more representative sample of the electorate, Nielsen said.

The survey was completed after last week’s debate, where Bush’s performance was widely panned after Rubio effectively parried his longtime friend’s criticism of his Senate voting by suggesting Bush was disingenuously trying to score political points.

Bush complained Sunday on “Meet The Press” that he was put at a disadvantage because he didn’t have time to respond to Rubio’s reply in the debate.

“That debate was a really weird debate just because you didn't get a chance to continue on,” Bush told NBC’s Chuck Todd. “I literally got cut off by all three of them saying, ‘Next question, next question.’”

Bush said he’s not criticizing Rubio personally: “The basic point with Marco isn't that he's not a good person or he's not a gifted politician — everybody can see that. It's that I have proven leadership skills. I got to be governor of a state and accomplish big things. And in this era of gridlock, it's really hard to break through, and I think he's given up. And I think that's the wrong thing to do. This is about public service, about solving problems.”

Bush also disavowed knowing about portions of his campaign’s slide show — presented last week by his campaign managers to donors at a family fundraiser — that questions Rubio’s personal financial management.

"Well I read about it when it was leaked, for sure,” he said. "I didn’t know about the PowerPoint. It wasn’t presented to me.”

Rubio, who says he won’t criticize Bush personally, told CBS’ “Face The Nation” that he disagreed with Bush’s emphasis on gubernatorial experience.

“It is true that the presidency is not like being a U.S. senator. But it's not like being a governor. There is no office in the world like the United States presidency,” Rubio told John Dickerson. “What I have shown over the last five years especially is judgment — good judgment — and understanding of the major issues before America, particularly on foreign policy. I do not believe there is anyone else in this race that's shown better judgment on the issues before America today than I have, and better understanding on them, especially in the foreign-policy realm.”