There’s fallout today from yesterday’s Quinnipiac Poll’s Senate survey that showed Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has nearly quadrupled his 3 point lead of September 28, to 11 points on Thurday over Republican Linda McMahon in the US Senate race. McMahon’s brain trust seems on the verge of letting TV do her campaigning for the stretch and she’ll avoid any direct contact with pesky reporters in the run for her first elective office.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and publisher of the “Crystal Ball” survey of state and national political races, said Thursday that the new QU Poll doesn’t surprise him.
“I have different methods of picking winners for the Crystal Ball and we’ve never had it as a tossup,” Sabato said in a phone interview. He said that since the revelations in February of Blumenthal occasionally misstating his Vietnam War, Sabato has listed the Connecticut Senate race as “leaning” Democrat, in Blumenthal’s favor.
“I have seen nothing to change my mind,” Sabato said.
Douglas Schwartz, director of the QU Poll, called Blumenthal’s lead “comfortable” since fewer likely voters are undecided with less than three weeks left before Nov. 2.
“We saw a shift among independents, who in our poll two weeks ago backed McMahon by five points,” he said. “Today they back Blumenthal by five points. We have also seen an increase in support for Blumenthal among Democrats and women. He has a very big lead among women.”
“They’re both doing very among their bases, but actually Blumenthal is doing a little bit better. He wins 95 percent of Democratic voters. She wins men slightly, but he wins women overwhelmingly.”
Schwartz said the shift could be the result of a few things. “She’s been on the defensive for the first time in this campaign. She stumbled. There was the minimum-wage flap, there were the debates and Blumenthal has been on the offensive in this campaign. We’ve seen his favorability numbers increase since our last poll two weeks ago. He didn’t have a very good September, but he has had a good October, so you could call him like Reggie Jackson, Mr. October.”
The poll was conducted from Thursday through Monday, after the Fox 61 televised debates.
“She gets a very-tepid favorability rating,” Schwartz said. “The same number have a favorable opinion of her as have an unfavorable opinion of her. While with Blumenthal, his numbers are positive and have gotten more positive over the last two weeks.”
Schwartz said that ad fatigue toward McMahon, shown in the late-September poll, is probably a factor.
“We did ask the question two weeks ago, so we were already seeing the numbers trending that way that people were saying two weeks ago that the ads were annoying and they were excessive and she’s just stepped it up, her advertising. He did as well,” Schwartz said.
The new poll did not focus on advertising, but likely voters were asked about matchups, favorabilities and job approvals.
“There is only three percent who are undecided, so that makes the challenge for McMahon particularly difficult. She trails by 11 so that even if she won all the ‘undecideds’ she’d still come up short. However this has been a really unusual campaign thus far, so anything is possible. There are another seven percent still left who could change their mind, but we’ve got less than three weeks to go, so there’s not a lot of time left for Linda McMahon. And once you’re into double digits, with only three weeks that’s tough to overcome. Not impossible but really tough. He’s got the momentum. His numbers are moving in the right direction, hers are not.”
He was asked why his poll showed Blumenthal with only a three- point lead two weeks ago, while others had him with higher margins. “I’m not going to comment on other polls.”
Schwartz said that during the interviewing process, 1,700 voters said they were registered and 1,100 were deemed likely to vote.
“We found a low ‘undecided’ now for several weeks, since we started polling. It seems that people had made up their minds for the most part pretty early although we have seen a pretty good shift in the last two weeks.”