A new poll in Texas earlier today reaffirmed its status as a solidly red state, not just in its gubernatorial election but across all of its statewide races. If that is the metric for assigning red-state status, however, what does the latest Sunshine State poll from Florida Atlantic University tell us?

For one thing, it tells us that Ron DeSantis will sail to re-election over Charlie Crist, but we knew that much already:

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is on track for re-election, leading Democrat challenger Charlie Crist by 11 percentage points in the latest Florida Atlantic University poll.

The poll comes off of solid approval ratings, particularly for DeSantis’ response to Hurricane Ian. DeSantis leads Crist 51-40% in the survey conducted of registered voters by the Florida Atlantic University Business and Economics Polling Initiative.

The Republican incumbent’s approval rating was 53%, with his response to the hurricane garnering 63% approval. Nearly 67% of respondents expect DeSantis to be reelected, as well.

Crist kicked off the general election campaign in August by telling Floridians who approved of DeSantis’ job performance that he didn’t want their vote anyway. Those voters are apparently finding his terms acceptable. Crist barely gets above the 37% of Floridian respondents in this poll that don’t offer affirmative job approval to DeSantis. And it’s pretty clear that his choice of running mate, teachers union chief Karla Hernández-Mats, isn’t bringing in any of the parents she insulted in demanding school closures in 2020.

The rest of the FAU poll shows that Democrats are outside the margin of error in the other key statewide race, however. Val Demings, whom Democrats presumed would match up favorably to incumbent Marco Rubio, is now falling behind as well:

In the Senate race, Incumbent U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R) is at 48% and Val Demings (D) at 42%, and 7% are still undecided. Furthermore, 60% of voters expect Senator Rubio to be re-elected.

That may prove more telling. Rubio lost some cachet after his failed presidential run in 2016, although his quick switch to the Senate race in that cycle ultimately proved successful against lesser-known Patrick Murphy in a good Republican cycle. Demings, on the other hand, has a national profile and was on Joe Biden’s short list for running mate two years ago. (In fact, he’d have been much better off choosing Demings than Kamala Harris, both for competence and political influence in a somewhat-competitive state.) Deming was supposedly a Rubio-killer, but instead Rubio has remained strong.

Notably, both results are roughly similar to RCP’s aggregation. The RCP rating on the Senate race gives Rubio a 5.7-point advantage, and Demings hasn’t been within four points of Rubio in a month now. Nor does it appear that Demings will be able to catch Rubio, not with the wind at the GOP’s back across the board and especially with DeSantis at the top of the ticket. And now that it’s clear that there aren’t any openings to turn Hurricane Ian into DeSantis’ Katrina, the national media won’t be able to bail out Demings or Crist.

Overall, results from state polls appear to be corroborating a sense of Republican momentum going into the midterms. In the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast, Duane Patterson and I discuss this poll, plus much more. Today’s show features:

• How serious has the midterm momentum change been? Duane Patterson and I review the polling.
• What can we glean from new results for key states such as New Hampshire, Michigan, Texas, and Florida?
• We both pick our bellwethers for the Senate
• Plus, my commentary for SRN focuses on just how radical Senate Democrat candidates are.
• And we have some fun talking about today’s Hugh Hewitt show as well!

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!