Mike Bloomberg surpasses Joe Biden in latest Florida poll

Mike Bloomberg has overtaken Joe Biden in a new poll of likely Florida voters in the state’s presidential primary with 27.3 percent support, up 10 points from a similar survey last month, while the former veep secured just under 25.9 percent.

The St. Pete Polls survey found that Biden’s support plummeted in the Sunshine State from more than 41 percent in January, according to The Hill.

Meanwhile, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) came in at 10.5 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota was in fifth with 8.6 percent.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and billionaire activist Tom Steyer rounded out the top seven with 4.8 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively.

This poll of 3,047 likely Florida Democratic primary voters was conducted from Wednesday to Thursday using the registered voter lists supplied by the state as of Jan. 7. The margin of error was 1.8 percentage points.

In the previous snapshot of the race, Biden performed 15 points better, with Bloomberg coming in second with 17 percent support.

The Florida Democratic primary takes place March 17 and 11.2 percent of voters said they remained undecided.

The latest poll suggests that the former New York City mayor — who has skipped the first four states, Iowa through South Carolina, entirely — has been able to build name recognition in the nation’s largest general-election battleground.

Bloomberg, who has poured about $350 million into TV, online and radio spots in his White House bid, has spent tens of millions on ads in Florida since he threw his hat in the ring on Nov. 24.

Meanwhile, most of his rivals have not yet begun airing ads in the state, preferring to spend money in earlier nominating contests, according to The Hill.

Bloomberg’s rising numbers come amid the release this week of audio from a 2015 speech in which he defended the NYPD’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” program and claimed that cops across the US could use a “Xerox” description of young minority males to identify murder suspects.

The billionaire media mogul publicly apologized for stop-and-frisk in November, shortly before launching his Democratic bid for president.

In response to the backlash after the audio’s release, Bloomberg said that by the time he left office, he had cut it by 95 percent.

“But I should’ve done it faster and sooner. I regret that, and I have apologized — and I have taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on black and Latino communities,” he said.

And in 2008 remarks also uncovered this week, he said the elimination of a discriminatory housing practice known as “redlining” was responsible for spurring the economic meltdown that year.