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Florida Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum has a four-point lead over former health industry executive Rick Scott in the Florida GOP gubernatorial primary, according to a new poll from Mason-Dixon Polling & Research.

Buoyed by a flurry of negative ads, McCollum now leads 34-30 after trailing 37-31 in a poll released last week by Mason-Dixon. Thirty-three percent of the 400 likely Republican voters surveyed remain undecided.

The survey also shows, however, that whoever prevails in the primary will face an uphill climb in the general election against the Democrat Alex Sink, the state's Chief Financial Officer. McCollum trails Sink 37-35. And though Scott has led Sink narrowly in most polls, he now trails by 16 points, 40-24, due to a lack of Republican support.

While 69 percent of Republicans would vote for McCollum in a race against Sink, only 42 percent say they would support Scott in the general election.

Independent candidate Lawton 'Bud' Chiles earns 13 percent in a race against McCollum and Sink and and 17 percent against Scott and Sink.

While Scott has attempted to paint McCollum as the consummate political insider, McCollum has relentlessly attacked Scott's integrity, questioning his role in a Medicare fraud case at Columbia/HCA, the company he headed in the 1990s.

In another move that could shake up the race, McCollum announced a tough new illegal immigration law Wednesday that he claims goes farther than the Arizona law that has prompted national debate and a lawsuit from the Obama administration.

Mason-Dixon surveyed 625 registered voters from August 9-11. The general election matchups have a margin of error of four percent. The Republican primary has a margin of error of five percent.