Meek: Bill Clinton didn’t ask me to drop out. It was… Charlie Crist

Heh.

What else will Charlie Crist try in his desperate attempt to remain relevant?

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The Democrat running in a 3-way Florida Senate race has a message: Bubba did not tell me to back down.

Rep. Kendrick Meek vehemently denied reports that former President Bill Clinton tried to persuade him to drop out, insisting that it was really Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running as an independent.

But Clinton's spokesman told Politico that the former president convinced Meek twice to abandon the race and endorse Crist.

Polls show that Meek is trailing behind. The logic behind the withdrawal is that it could swing liberal votes to Crist, giving him a better shot at taking on GOP front-runner Marco Rubio.

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Crist has also been chatting up the White House. There’s only one chip that Crist is bargaining with in his backroom, secret discussions with in his state and national Democrats.  If he wins, he’ll caucus with the Democrats.

I’m frankly disgusted with any moderate Republicans who still back Crist.  There can’t be many, but there have to be a few.  What are they thinking?

I think most of Crist’s “support” is actually coming from the far left Democrat base, who will be puking their guts out when Rubio wins the three-way race with an outright majority.

Although Meek himself is a liberal who embraced Obama’s sweeping socialist agenda, I find it equally disgusting that the left would abandon their principles and vote for Crist just to keep Rubio out. As disgusting as it is, it’s deeply ironic that the left is abandoning principle and breaking for Crist, who abandoned his principles to stay relevant.

Birds of a feather.

Florida primary election results show that GOP voters are fired up

Jim Geraghty touched on this last night, but with the 99% tallies in, it's worth a closer look.

First, let’s look at the Florida Governor’s race, which had two high-profile candidates duking it out in an expensive, brutal primary campaign on the GOP side and a less intense race on the Democrat side.

Republican
Rick Scott	595,484	46%
Bill McCollum	557,455	43%
Mike McCalister	130,059	10%
Total	1,282,998
Democrat
Alex Sink	664,063	77%
Brian Moore	199,918	23%
Total	863,981

An argument could be made that the vote total difference —419,017 —was due to the high profile nature of the GOP campaign.  Rick Scott spent $30 million of his own money; McCollum had the financial support and backing of the party apparatus. But that argument doesn’t hold up too well when you look at the other major statewide races yesterday.  Let’s look at the Attorney General’s race, next:

Republican
Pam Bondi	455,069	38%
Jeff Kottkamp	394,752	33%
Holly Benson	351,508	29%
Total	1,201,329
Democrat
Dan Gelber	486,962	59%
Dave Aronberg	337,633	41%
Total	824,595

The difference between GOP and Democrat turnout in this election is on the same order of magnitude as the Governor’s race, in this case 376,734 votes, as is the total turnout for both major parties.  This was nowhere near as much of a high-profile primary election as the Governor’s race, yet turnout and turnout differential are about the same.

Last of all of the major statewide elections is the Florida Senate primary:

Republican
* Marco Rubio	1,059,546	85%
William Kogut	111,590	9%
William Escoffery	81,875	7%
Total	1,253,011
Democrat
* Kendrick Meek	523,106	57%
Jeff Greene	283,497	31%
Glenn Burkett	59,587	7%
Maurice Ferre	44,508	5%
Total	910,698

In this race the GOP winner Marco Rubio garnered more votes than the entire field of the Democrats candidates, combined,  and the difference between total GOP turnout and turnout in the Democrat race is 342,313.  There was a higher total turnout in this race than the other two, and the difference is less than the other two.  These figures are still in the same neighborhood though, and these three races demonstrate a pretty clear pattern. In the three major statewide races, each shows a similar proportion of Republican vs. Democrat votes in the primary, with vote totals and differences consistent across all three.

There are similar patterns in US House of Representative races as well, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats in a handful of key races.

The only conclusions that can be reached is that Republican voters in Florida are more motivated than their Democrat counterparts, and since primary voters are the ones most likely to return to the polls for the general election, it’s safe to say that Florida is setting up as a 2010 battleground that Republicans look very likely to win, and win big.

All election results come from this site.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.