Rubio and Murphy in Florida – What Is Going to Happen There?

Let’s take a look at some numbers. . .

In the off-year election 2010 Republican Charlie Crist ran as an independent, after losing the GOP primary to Marco Rubio.  Rubio won the election, but failed to outvote Crist and the Democrat Kendrick Weeks.  They totaled 2.71 million to Rubio’s 2.65 million.  Between the 3 the total was about 5.36 million votes.  Crist actually flipped in January 2011 to being a Democrat.

In the presidential year election of 2012, 8.19 million votes were cast in the Senatorial race between Bill Nelson and Tea Partier Connie Mack , with Nelson absolutely slaughtering Mack, 4.52 million to 3.46 million.  2.83 million more votes were cast — presumably because of the Presidential election being a big draw.  Certainly with Mack trailing so badly, the 8.19 didn’t come out for the Senate race, as was the case in 2010.

That is the background for this election, numbers-wise.  This being a presidential year again, we should be expecting about 8.2 million again, perhaps a bit more.  In neither year 2010 or 2012 did the GOP candidate garner more than 3.5 million votes.  Rubio, with not even outvoting the combined Crist-Meeks tandem, has no real history running against a real Democrat.  Crist, being a moderate and eventually a Democrat, garnered many Democratic votes, as he was seen as a much stronger candidate than Meeks — out-polling him by 600,000.  So it is impossible to tell what Rubio would do head-to-head with a real Democrat.

But he is going to have to draw about 1.6 million more votes than he did in 2010 — just to be close.