Crist Leaving Office on High Note for Year on Approval

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is leaving office on a high note, according to Public Policy Polling, which finds him with his best approval numbers this year: 50 percent of voters approve of his performance, while 39 percent disapprove. That’s up substantially from his low for the year, when he polled 35 percent in March, according to the PPP blog.

His other approval tallies for the year range from 41 to 47 percent.

Among independents, the former Republican who turned independent during his campaign for the U.S. Senate, he totes what PPP describes as “stratospheric” numbers, with 70 approving, compared with only 26 percent disapproving. In fact, PPP notes that that’s the highest independent approval rate for PPP has found for any politician this year.

The end of Crist’s Senate campaign, which he lost to Marco Rubio, also appears to have earned him some GOP forgiveness. Oh, he’s still unpopular among Republicans, at 36 percent approval to 54 percent disapproval — but that's well up from a 23/64 spread in late October. On the other hand, he has slipped among Democrats, from 59 percent approval right before the election to 54 percent now.