In The Loop – September 23, 2022

A crystal ball, tea leaves, or polling?

We are just a month and a half out from CTs statewide elections, and who are we to believe? This week, Quinnipiac University’s well-respected poll reported encouraging news for the Democratic statewide candidates while somewhat pouring cold water on the Republican challengers. With a rather large margin of 17%, Governor Lamont leads Stefanowski in this first likely voter pool. For the US Senate race, there is no surprise that current US Senator Blumenthal leads by almost the same numbers as Levy struggles to engage the independent voters of CT.

Some info buried in the “crosstabs” tells an interesting story. Of the likely voters polled for governor, 84% say their minds are made up, and for the US senate race, it’s 89%! Not too shabby. The biggest consideration for this election is inflation – not even a topic that a governor can address, and normally votes for the US senate races focus on global issues and they leave domestic issues to the Congressional races. Not surprising for Lamont, Democrats across the board favor the Democratic candidate by 97%. Whereas, in the last race where there was an incumbent Democrat, that number was much lower when polled in September of 2014 where he captured only 48% of the likely Democratic voters.

Also interestingly, Lamont captures a larger number of Independent voters likely to vote than in the past elections at this time of the election cycle……KEEP READING.