Gov. Charlie Crist still leads a three-way race for the U.S. Senate and the race for governor is a toss-up, a new poll indicated Friday.

The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute released a survey taken July 22-27, showing the independent Crist with a lead of 37 percent to 32 percent for Republican Marco Rubio and 17 percent for Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene.

ADVERTISEMENT

If U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami Gardens, pulls out a Democratic primary victory over Greene, the numbers shift to 39 percent for Crist, 33 percent for Rubio and 13 percent for Meek.

That's not much change from a June Quinnipiac poll. But Peter Brown, assistant director of the institute, said Crist — who left the GOP to run with no party affiliation — needs to maintain his current appeal drawing 40 percent Democrats, 20 percent Republicans and about half of the independent voters.

That's a tall order, once Rubio and the Democrats begin beating up on him after the Aug. 24 primaries, Brown said.

"At this point, Crist's edge is in name identification," said Brown. "When those numbers even out, as they will to a large degree, we'll have a better picture of how the race stands."

In the governor's race, Brown said, a deluge of negative ads fired between Naples businessman Rick Scott and Attorney General Bill McCollum has held down the standing of both Republicans, while slightly buoying Sink, who has no serious opposition in the Democratic primary.

The independent campaign of Lawton "Bud" Chiles, son of the former governor, is a wild card.

Brown said Scott polled 29 percent to 27 percent for Sink and 14 percent for Chiles, a former Democrat running as an independent. If McCollum is the GOP nominee, Quinnipiac's numbers indicated he has 27 percent support to 26 percent for Sink — and Chiles remaining at 14 percent.

Chiles said he's not a spoiler, hurting Sink while he has no chance to win himself.

"I'm not trying to hurt Alex Sink, I'm trying to hurt everybody in this race. I'm in to win," Chiles said. "I feel pretty doggone good right now, being within about 12 percent of a man who's spent $25 million and people who've been in statewide office almost four years."

McCollum spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said "we are working on closing strong, going into the primary and gearing up for November."

Joe Kildea, who runs "rapid response" for the Scott campaign, said the polls show him to be a stronger nominee than McCollum.

"Floridians are looking for a principled conservative outsider with a detailed economic plan and proven record of creating jobs and balancing budgets — not flip-flopping career politicians or liberal ideologues beholden to Obama," said Kildea.

Sink spokeswoman Kyra Jennings said the fact that Sink is so close to either McCollum or Scott showed that voters want change, after 12 years of Republican governors.

"It's clear Floridians are looking for an alternative to the out-of-touch attacks from Scott and McCollum," she said.

The poll was conducted among 969 registered voters. It has an error margin of 3.2 percentage points.