Wyllie Makes Poll Gains, Scott & Crist Deadlocked

TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami) - One Florida governor candidate is making gains in the polls, but it's not who voters would expect.

Libertarian Adrian Wyllie is now pulling 13 percent support from likely voters in Optimus' new poll.

That is two percentage points better than the last poll from the new Republican-leaning analytics firm, and a four point turnaround from the first survey by the firm released on August 24th.

Meanwhile, Democrat Charlie Crist and Gov. Rick Scott are deadlocked at 40-39 percent.

Wyllie fell just short of the 15 percent support he needed by September 30th to have a chance to participate in the October 15th debate featuring Gov. Rick Scott and Democrat Charlie Crist.

Wyllie has also been shut out of Friday's Telemundo debate.

"This week, the two candidates stayed neck and neck, and the only 'mover' in the race was Wyllie, who showed gains just outside the margin of error," 0ptimus' founder and analyst Brian Stobie told CBS4's news partner the Miami Herald. "We view this is a backlash to the two highly negative campaigns saturating Florida airwaves, particularly from those in our modeled undecided voter universes, who seem to be leading this trend toward Wyllie."

Both Scott and Crist have tuned their ads to have a more positive spin as of late.

0ptimus uses robo-polling technology that, like all others, misses cellphone-only households. To accommodate this gap, the firm uses large sample sizes ranging anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000, in hopes of catching demographics similar to cellphone only voters. Other firms, such as SurveryUSA, sends cellphone only users a smartphone questionnaire to poll them.

Here are 0ptimus' partisan cross tabs (likely votes based on party affiliation):

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