{"id":327237,"date":"2026-07-02T13:17:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/327237\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:17:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:17:12","slug":"charlie-crist-grows-lead-as-ken-welch-support-plummets-in-latest-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/327237\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Crist grows lead as Ken Welch support plummets in latest poll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Gov. Charlie Crist<\/a> has grown his lead over incumbent St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch<\/a>, while Welch\u2019s support has plummeted and the pool of undecided voters is shrinking.<\/p>\n

A St. Pete Polls<\/a> survey taken this week found Crist with nearly 28% support, more than 12 percentage points ahead of Welch and more than 17 points ahead of the rest of the mayoral race field.<\/p>\n

When taking into consideration where voters are leaning on their voting decision, undecided voters shrink from 31% to 27%, and Crist\u2019s lead grows more than others, indicating Crist\u2019s support is on the rise, while Welch\u2019s is on the decline.<\/p>\n

Nearly 30% of voters say they either support Crist or are leaning in his direction. That\u2019s a more than 4-point gain in support. Welch, meanwhile, gained less than a percentage point when considering voters who are leaning toward a preferred candidate, from just over 15% to 16% support. When considering leaners, Crist has opened a nearly 14-percentage-point lead over Welch.<\/p>\n

City Council Member Brandi Gabbard<\/a> was the only other candidate in the field to hit double-digit support, and just barely, with 10% support and nearly 11% when considering leaners. Former St. Pete Fire Chief Jim Large<\/a>, jail administrator Maria Scruggs<\/a> and former Shore Acres Neighborhood Civic Association President Kevin Batdorf<\/a> all posted single-digit support.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The numbers are even more stark when considering past polling. A March poll<\/a>, also conducted by St. Pete Polls, found Crist with 23% support to Welch\u2019s 19%. When considering leaners, Crist\u2019s support has increased about 7 percentage points since March, while Welch\u2019s has dropped 3 percentage points.<\/p>\n

Both the March and June surveys also queried likely voters on a head-to-head matchup between Crist and Welch. Both found Crist with the edge, but Crist performed even better in the June poll. The March poll had Crist with a 5-percentage-point lead, at 36% to 31%, while the June poll showed Crist with an 8-percentage-point lead, at 40% to 32%.<\/p>\n

Welch\u2019s backslide is unsurprising when considering his job approval numbers<\/a>. The March poll found Welch above water by 7 percentage points, with a 39% approval rating to 32% disapproval. Now, the poll finds Welch 5 points underwater, at 35% approval to 40% disapproval.<\/p>\n

The latest poll shows Welch\u2019s support declining among Black voters, a bad sign for the incumbent who is serving as the city\u2019s first Black Mayor<\/a>. In March, Welch led among Black voters with 55% support, a huge lead over Crist, who posted just 16% support. But Crist gained 14 percentage points in the latest survey, while Welch slipped 13 percentage points, to just 42% support and only 12 points ahead of Crist among that demographic.<\/p>\n

Other demographics are also trending in Crist\u2019s direction, with the former U.S. Representative<\/a> pulling nearly 29% support among Democrats<\/a> compared to just 22% for Welch in the full Primary field, including voters who are leaning toward a particular candidate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Head-to-head, Crist leads Welch by 8 percentage points, but his support among Democrats trails Welch, at 34% to 41%. Crist more than makes up for that among Republicans, at nearly 48% to 22%. Independent voters also break for Crist, at 42% to 28%.<\/p>\n

But if polling trends continue, it\u2019s possible Welch could never face Crist in a head-to-head matchup.<\/p>\n

If one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the Aug. 18 Primary<\/a>, there won\u2019t be a runoff. Given the large field of candidates, 50% is a difficult threshold to reach, but with nearly a third of voters still undecided, it is possible.<\/p>\n

It is also possible that another candidate could surge past Welch<\/a> if his approval continues to decline, which would force a runoff with no incumbent on the ballot.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s important to note because the poll was taken before voters had seen a new ad attacking Welch<\/a> over his absenteeism at City Hall. The ad drew attention to a Tampa Bay Times report<\/a> showing Welch had shown up to City Hall just 34% of workdays during his first eight months in office.<\/p>\n

And Crist has the resources to get his message out, with a $1 million lead<\/a> in fundraising over Welch.<\/p>\n

That money lead will allow Crist\u2019s official campaign to share positive messaging about him, while his affiliated political committee<\/a> is free to both share positive messaging about Crist and negative messaging about Welch.<\/p>\n

The St. Pete Polls survey was taken June 29-30 among 451 likely St. Pete voters. Voters who said they didn\u2019t plan to vote were excluded from the results. The poll has a 4.6-percentage-point margin of error.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ed. note: This story was drafted with assistance from AI. Editorial judgment, sourcing, and final review were performed by Peter Schorsch and the Florida Politics editorial team.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ed. note:\u00a0Michelle Todd Schorsch\u00a0is the Chair of St. Pete Shines, a political committee backing Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor. Todd Schorsch is married to Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Gov. Charlie Crist has grown his lead over incumbent St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch, while Welch\u2019s support…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3300,3347,71439,2346,72295,3175,202,204,3304,203,7382,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-327237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-brandi-gabbard","tag-charlie-crist","tag-jim-large","tag-ken-welch","tag-kevin-batdorf","tag-maria-scruggs","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-mayoral-race","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-pete-polls","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}