Sen. Marco Rubio speaks at a primary election party. | AP Photo/John Raoux As Rubio hides amid Trump controversy, Florida poll shows senator up 7

Sen. Marco Rubio holds a 7-point lead over Congressman Patrick Murphy in the latest University of North Florida poll that shows the Democratic challenger faces a huge hurdle because of how unknown he is.

The poll of likely Florida voters was completed before Friday's revelations that Trump used extremely vulgar terms to describe pursuing women, but UNF’s pollster Michael Binder said it’s unclear how much damage it could cause Rubio, who has avoided the press and campaign trail as fellow Republicans withdrew their support from the GOP presidential nominee or called on him to resign.


Though Rubio condemned Trump’s sexually aggressive remarks Friday evening, Murphy has called Rubio a “coward” for his silence since. Binder, however, wonders who’s listening.

“The biggest factor in this race is that no one really knows who Patrick Murphy is. In our poll, 36 percent either didn’t know who he was or just said they didn’t know about him,” said Binder, noting that fewer people, 35 percent, had a favorable opinion of Murphy and 29 percent an unfavorable view.

By contrast, only 9 percent of the respondents were unaware of Rubio, who was viewed favorably by 49 percent and unfavorably by 43 percent. Rubio has such high name ID in great part because he ran for president before leaving the race after Trump drubbed him in Florida’s March 15 presidential primary by nearly 46 percent to 27 percent. Three months later, Rubio went back on his word and announced he’d run for reelection to the Senate.

Rubio, however, is scheduled to speak Saturday in Tampa at the Republican Party of Florida's quarterly meeting, where Trump running mate Mike Pence is also supposed to appear.

Trump’s dominance in the senator’s home state have weighed heavily on Rubio, who clashed with Trump on the campaign trail, tepidly endorsed him since and then proceeded to keep his distance from the nominee.

On Thursday, Trump is scheduled to have a noon rally at the South Florida Fair Expo Center in West Palm Beach. Rubio is not expected to attend — even though he’s scheduled to wrap up a foreign policy speech one hour earlier at the Boca Raton Synagogue, which is less than 27 miles away and is almost a straight shot on Florida’s Turnpike.

In contrast, Murphy today is scheduled for the first time to speak at a Hillary Clinton event in Miami.

"Marco is viewing this situation through a 2016 and a 2020 prism if he decides to run for president,” said one top Rubio backer who is familiar with the senator’s style of thinking. “None of us thinks Trump really has a prayer of winning anymore, so the question becomes: What happens to all of his voters? How do we keep these voters in the Republican fold? Poking a stick in their eye by withdrawing an endorsement is bad for Marco in the long term and in the short term: These people might not vote for him, and that’s a big part of the Republican base.”

The UNF poll, Binder said, shows Rubio “has done a better job of rallying his base (81 percent support among Republicans) than Patrick Murphy (69 percent support among Democrats).” Murphy wins independents by a narrow 45-41 percent.

Murphy is struggling with traditional bastions of support for Democrats. He’s losing Hispanics to the bilingual, Cuban-American Rubio by 43-48 percent and his black support is relatively low at 73-13 percent. Also, while Rubio has the support of men by 52-38 percent over Murphy, the Republican is essentially tied 44-43 percent among women.

To peel women voters away from Rubio, Murphy’s campaign has run TV bilingual ads pointing out Rubio opposes abortion for women infected with the Zika virus, which has been linked to severe microcephaly among infants. Apparently stung, Rubio responded with its own Spanish-language ad that falsely suggests Rubio never held this position.

In August, Rubio told POLITICO Florida that he doesn’t believe a pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus should have the right to an abortion — even if she had reason to believe the child would be born with severe microcephaly.

This UNF poll is the 22nd in a row to show Rubio with a lead. In numerous polls, Florida voters appear ready to split their ticket by choosing Clinton for president and Rubio for Senate. The UNF poll shows that Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton by 3 points at the same time Rubio leads Murphy 47-41 percent.

The poll of 696 likely Florida voters has an error margin of 3.8 points. UNF conducted the presidential and Senate race surveys at the same time, from Sep. 27 through Oct. 4, but it released the U.S. Senate wave of the poll only now because Hurricane Matthew was bearing down on the state late last week and chewed into Jacksonville, UNF's home.

Because of Matthew’s onset, many Floridians probably knew nothing of Trump’s remarks until they were brought up Sunday at the second presidential debate. Rubio had largely avoided commenting on the matter as he surveyed storm damage on Friday and Saturday.

“Rubio was everywhere, doing what he’s supposed to do as an elected official, getting on TV and calling into the Weather Channel to talk to Jim Cantore,” Binder said. “Murphy couldn’t do that because he’s not a senator.”

Compounding Murphy’s problem: the decision of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Senate Majority PAC to yank $12 million of $20.8 million in promised TV ad spending for the Democrat. That represents about six weeks of solid TV advertising that the relative unknown desperately needed.

“The Democrats are blowing this,” Binder said. “That’s a huge problem for Murphy because absentee ballots are already in the mail and people are already voting.”

As of Monday, more than 31,000 people had already cast vote-by-mail ballots. Nearly 2.7 million of Florida’s 12.5 million voters have requested absentee ballots.