Posted on 09/28/2010 5:58:31 PM PDT by neverdem
Republican Linda McMahon and Democrat Richard Blumenthal are virtually tied in the Connecticut Senate race, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday.
McMahon trails Blumenthal, 46 percent to 49 percent — a 3-point difference that is within the poll’s margin of error. Only 4 percent of voters surveyed reported they were still undecided.
Blumenthal was considered a shoo-in for the open Connecticut Senate race earlier this year because of his high marks from voters as the state’s five-term attorney general. Blumenthal still has a high approval rating — 68 percent in the poll — but he is quickly losing ground in the Senate contest to the wealthy political newcomer.
A similar Quinnipiac University poll released two weeks ago showed Blumenthal with a 6-point lead, 51 percent to 45 percent, over McMahon.
"With five weeks to go, the Connecticut Senate race is very close. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is ahead by only a statistically insignificant 3 points,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz. “Blumenthal has to be concerned about Linda McMahon's momentum. He can hear her footsteps as she closes in on him.”
Blumenthal's campaign pushed back Tuesday with its own internal poll results showing the Democrat with a double-digit lead. The Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research survey showed Blumenthal leading McMahon, 52 percent to 40 percent, among 606 likely voters polled Sept. 20 to 23
The Quinnipiac poll shows that McMahon appears to have made up ground with independent voters, who now favor her over Blumenthal in the race, 49 percent to 44 percent. The Sept. 14 Quinnipiac Poll showed Blumenthal with a small edge among independent voters over McMahon, 47 percent to 46 percent.
McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has spent at least $22 million of her personal fortune to fuel her bid against Blumenthal. McMahon’s prolific spending has resulted in a massive advertising blitz that has blanketed Connecticut for months.
In the poll, 56 percent of those who have seen McMahon’s television ads called them annoying, and 54 percent of likely voters described the Republican’s ad campaign as excessive. Meanwhile, 49 percent of likely voters in the poll said Blumenthal's television advertising frequency has been just right.
But while McMahon has the lead among independent voters, survey results show Blumenthal is more popular among women voters. The poll showed that women back Blumenthal, 56 percent to 39 percent, while men pick McMahon, 52 percent to 44 percent.
President Barack Obama, who visited Connecticut earlier this month to fundraise for Blumenthal, has a 45 percent job approval rating – an unchanged number from the poll two weeks ago.
The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,083 likely voters from Sept. 21 to 26 and had a margin of error of 3 points.
1. The headline is in error. When the Republican is leading by 3%, that's a dead heat. When the Dem is leading, journalists are supposed to report it as a dramatic lead. 2. I'm disgusted that the CT voters still support Blumenthal even that much.
Or she could keep reminding the voters that he is a liar and a phony. Like all Democrats.
McMahon’s campaign has been very impressive. McMahon and Raese are my two pleasant surprises in this campaign. Both were campaigns the Dems were supposed to win hands down and both look like the Dems are about to go down.
Ping
This race is improving, but there are clouds on the horizon. There is reason to believe that McMahon is oversaturating the airwaves & mailboxes and that it could backfire. I think she needs to switch gears and give more effort to the GOTV effort now.
Raese is quite a surprise considering his opponent is the governor sitting on a 70% approval rating, IIRC. Maybe this is the end of the line for Jacksonian Democrats as a significant national force in the rats' party.
It is good to see the Dim drop below 50%. That gives her a real shot.
Manchin showed his true colors when he appointed a young ultraleft moonbat to the Senate vacancy.
I am sure she's doing both. She needs to keep pounding the airwaves and her liberal opponent and start focusing on GOTV. She has plenty of money, so I am sure the operation is nice and sophisticated. You don't get from 25-30 points down to three without a bunch of smart people around you.
That's one example of why I hope the days of the Jacksonian Democrats are numbered, at least as being a national force. They could remain significant at state level politics for a while, IMHO.
I don’t think there’s been a Jacksonian Democrat as a national force since the 19th century (and in my estimation, had Jackson lived to the Civil War, he’d probably have become a Republican since he was an ardent Unionist). Manchin certainly isn’t one. Remember that by the start of the 20th century, WV was a Republican state and remained so until the Depression. The Democrat majority that supplanted those Republicans were modern UMW Laborites, not old-school 19th century Jacksonians. Those Laborites worked mightily hard to turn the state into a statist, stagnant backwater after being a booming state under the 1896-1932 GOP era. Only now is the state slowly starting to get out from under the Labor Democrats (if only because the old-school Social Conservative instincts has turned the state viscerally off of the National Democrats). The funny thing is that the flip back to the GOP was on course by the early ‘70s, but Watergate set things back, as it did in a lot of other Southern states.
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