Even at record lows, Gov. Charlie Crist's approval rating is still respectably high.
Crist's job performance as governor has the approval of 59 percent of Floridians, according to a poll released Thursday by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Connecticut.
The poll surveyed 1,215 Floridian voters and had a 2.8 percent margin of error.
Crist's approval rating is the lowest it has been since he took office in January 2007. That February, he had an approval rating of 69 percent, and it topped out in July 2007 at 73 percent, according to polls by the same institute.
But 59 percent is far from bad, said Peter Brown, assistant director of the polling institute.
"Most governors would die for his numbers," Brown said.
Michael Martinez, a UF political science associate professor, said he was surprised Crist's numbers weren't lower.
The decrease probably came from the end of Crist's honeymoon period and increasing worries about Florida's economy, Martinez said.
The same poll found 62 percent of Floridians to be dissatisfied with "the way things are going in Florida today," up from 52 percent when the poll was last taken in October.
Only 5 percent said they were "very satisfied."
That frustration gets taken out on the governor, Martinez said.
But, he said, there's no reason for Crist to worry unless his approval rating drops closer to 50 percent.
"He used to be in really good shape," Martinez said. "Now he's in good shape."
Ben Grove, chairman of UF College Republicans, said his opinion of Crist hasn't changed since he voted for the governor.
Though he disagrees with Crist on some issues, Grove said he and other members of College Republicans feel he has kept his campaign promises to lower taxes and make the government more accountable. "Yes, it was a little bit of a drop," Grove said of the governor's approval rating, "but we're still talking about one of the most popular governors in the nation."
Grove also noted that the Republican governor's numbers aren't bad among Democrats, either.
According to the poll, 57 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of Independents approve of Crist's performance.
"If Democrats are approving him as well, you know he's doing a good job," Grove said.
With Crist's approval rating starting off so high, a drop was probably inevitable, Martinez said.
"When a politician starts so high in terms of approval ratings, there's nowhere to go but down," he said.
