It's been more than five weeks since the last Quinnipiac Poll on the CT Senate race, and with six weeks still remaining before the November 7th election Joe Lieberman still shows a ten-point lead among likely Connecticut voters.

The results of the poll have Lieberman at 49% to Lamont's 39%. Republican candidate Alan "Gold" Schlesinger is still stuck at 5%. If you distribute the "undecideds" proportionately, the numbers indicate that Lieberman would win with 52% if the election were held today. If you gave all the "undecideds" to Ned Lamont, Lieberman still wins 49% to 46%. I seriously doubt any Schlesinger voters would switch to Lamont.

The A/P story tries its best to spin the poll results by pointing out that the race has "tightened" since the Aug. 17th poll, which was Lieberman leading 53% to Lamont's 41%. Yeah. It "tightened" so much Lieberman's lead went from 12 points to 10! Wow, is that a dynamic swing or what?

The real story when you compare those numbers is that Lamont's total support dropped from 41% to 39%. Lamont's momentum coming out of the Aug. 8th primary seems to have evaporated.

Now let's look at the internal data. While it's true that the bulk of Lieberman's support comes from Republicans and Independents, it's clear that Democrats are not united behind Ned Lamont. Democrat respondents favored the Greenwich millionaire 57% to 37%. More than one third of likely Democrat voters still prefer Joe Lieberman.

Remember last week when the Lamont campaign released an ad calling Lieberman a "turncoat"? I said at the time that I guessed that the reason they were focusing so much on Lieberman's Independent candidacy was because their internals were probably showing that Lamont, the Democrat's annointed candidate, was not closing the deal with enough of the party faithful.

Looks like that is indeed the case. Five weeks ago in the August 17th Quinnipiac poll, Democrats favored Lamont over Lieberman 60% to 33%. That's a seven point swing back in Lieberman's favor - among Democrats!

Another significant factor in the data proves another point:

"Lamont wins among those who say Iraq is the most important issue to their vote, but that is only 35 percent of the electorate. Lieberman wins on all the other issues voters say matter most to them, including terrorism and the economy."

When asked if Ned Lamont "has the right kind of experience to be a United States Senator or not", 47% of respondents said "No".

When asked if each candidate was spending more time "explaining what he would do if elected Senator or attacking" their opponent, guess what?

Lieberman: Explaining what he would do - 53% or attacking Ned Lamont - 33%
Lamont: Explaining what he would do - 25% or attacking Joe Lieberman - 62%

Joe Lieberman need not feel completely secure just yet. Six weeks is a long time in politics. But it's clear that as long as he continues to connect with CT voters - regardless of party - as a positive force for his state in the U.S. Senate, then the great CT moonbat "insurgency" of 2006 will be swatted away by a popular majority. And the Dems will have thrown away a perfectly safe Senate seat.

UPDATE:
Jim Geraghty sees the final spread on Nov. 7th in single digits and I'm inclined to agree with him, though he presents a comprehensive analysis of the data which shows Lamont doesn't have a snowball's chance of beating Liebs.

Posted by: Gary at 09:30 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 606 words, total size 4 kb.