Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, speaking to reporters in the Capitol this morning. Tape:
“She’s opened up a big lead over Chris Shays in the Republican primary and closed the gap with Chris Murphy in the general election. She now leads by Shays by 29 points. In the general election against Murphy, she trails Murphy by just 3 points. This is the first time that McMahon has run competitively with Murphy in the election. The big movement in the Republican primary for McMahon, we saw was among men, moderates and those with less than a college education. In the general election, we saw independents moving toward McMahon. Also we saw big movement among those without a college education moving toward Linda McMahon.
In the Democratic primary Murphy has opened up a big 30-point lead over Susan Bysiewicz. One of the changes that we’ve seen from the last poll, which was conducted in March, is that Linda McMahon is now the stronger general election candidate against Chris Murphy. She does run better than Shays against Murphy. She comes within 3 points. Shays loses by 8 points. So that was one of the main arguments that Chris Shays has made, was that he was more electable. We found that in the last pole but not this pole.
I would say that one of the keys to McMahon’s improvement in the poll is that she is the only one who is doing television advertising right now. That, as well as even before that advertising, she started out with a big name recognition advantage. Over 40 percent of voters said they don’t know enough about the other three Senate candidates: Shays, Bysiewicz and Murphy. So she is much better known than they are. That is due to her 2010 campaign for Senate. It’s an advantage right now in the sense that the other three candidates just aren’t nearly as well known, with over 40 percent saying they don’t know enough about them, so in that sense it’s an advantage. And her favorability numbers have improved. They’re positive this time. In our previous two polls they were negative. So more people say they have a favorable opinion of her this time than an unfavorable one. The other two polls, more people had an unfavorable opinion. She got 43 percent of the vote in the (2010) Senate election. She’s at 43 percent right now in the match-up. That’s a good question about whether or not that’s a ceiling. Can she get above that 43 percent? Her ads have spoken to her humble background and so she seems to be connecting more with folks that are less well off…We asked whether her experience as CEO of the WWE made them more less likely to vote for her. And by about 2-1 than said less likely. So it’s still a problem for her. But one of the things she has going for her is when we ask people whether they wanted to see a political outsider elected or someone with years of Washington experience, they said that they would prefer a Washington outsider. So that plays to her strength, but she still has a problem because people are still concerned about her wrestling background.”