FLORIDA COOLS ON OBAMA – AT 9:26 A.M. ET:  Florida, like Ohio, is a key swing state that political pundits look to for indications of trends.  Right now the trends in the sunshine state are not in Mr. Obama's favor:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — President Barack Obama is losing support among Florida voters, especially among independents, a poll released Thursday shows.

Fifty percent of voters surveyed randomly by landline telephone between July 27-Aug. 2 by Quinnipiac (Conn.) University said Obama would not deserve a second term in the election were held today. However, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the only announced Republican candidate with enough support in the poll to give the president a strong challenge. Both men were favored by 44 percent of those questioned.

In a matchup against Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is expected to get into the race for the GOP presidential nomination, Obama was favored 44 percent to 39 percent.

However, Obama held double-digit leads over all other Republican presidential hopefuls.

Romney, an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination in 2008, led Perry 23 percent to 13 percent in a sampling of 510 Republican voters with none of the other announced candidates reaching double digits.

"Gov. Perry's stock is rising even before he announces whether he'll run," said Peter Brown, assistant director for Quinnipiac's polling institute...

...It was with independents where Obama took his biggest hit. Sixty-one percent of independents said they now disapprove of the president's performance compared to 33 percent who approved. In May, 47 percent of the independents approved of Obama's job performance compared to 45 percent who did not. 

COMMENT:  The methodology of this poll – voters selected randomly by landline telephone – suggests that the condition of the president is probably worse than the poll indicates.  Generally, Mr. Obama fares poorest among polls of likely voters, the most accurate polls of all.

If Republicans can nail down Florida, it's a major step toward the presidency.  One of Florida's senators is Marco Rubio, who also is the man most mentioned as a vice presidential choice on the GOP side.  Not a bad idea.  Romney-Rubio, Perry-Rubio, or Rubio-...?

August 4, 2011