The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
New poll: Lamont has 13-point lead over Stefanowski in governor’s race
Gov. Ned Lamont has a 13-point lead over Republican Bob Stefanowski according to a new Emerson College poll of the governor's race, which also found that more than half of surveyed voters approved of Lamont's job performance during his first term.
When asked who they planned to support in the Nov. 8 general election, 50.5 percent of the poll's respondents chose Lamont, while 38 percent selected Stefanowski, according to data from the poll's authors. Another 11.6 percent of voters remained undecided.
The poll of 1,000 Connecticut voters was conducted between May 10-11 and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, according to Emerson, which received support from WTNH and The Hill to conduct the survey.
Respondents were asked about the race after Lamont and Stefanowski each received their party's respective endorsements without any opposition at conventions held earlier this month. The race between the two men is a rematch of the 2018 gubernatorial race, which Lamont won by a slim margin of 3.2 percentage points amid a strong year nationally for Democrats.
Lamont — who did not receive support from a bare majority of voters in 2018 — now has the approval of 54.5 percent of voters, the poll found, while 32.1 percent disapproved of his performance and 13.4 percent were neutral or undecided.
When pressed to say which candidate they were currently leaning toward, 57.9 percent of undecided voters fell into Lamont's camp, while 42.1 percent sided with Stefanowski.
Jake Lewis, a spokesman for the governor's campaign team, said they would not be commenting on polls during the race.
The poll found that Lamont enjoys support from a wide variety of voting blocs, including both men and women, Blacks, Hispanics, whites, urban and suburbanites and voters in every age bracket. One potential weakness for the governor's reelection campaign, however, came among independent voters, who, according to the poll, backed Stefanowski by 43.5 percent over 39.1 percent for Lamont.
Rural voters were also more likely to back Stefanowski, doing so at a margin of 46.3 percent to 42.7 percent for Lamont.
“We know that polls over the next five months are going to go up and down, but what Bob hears every day from people across the state is their frustration with how out of touch Ned Lamont is with the struggle people face every day,” Stefanowski's spokeswoman, Liz Kurantowicz, said in a statement Wednesday. “While Ned Lamont is patting himself on the back for a job well done, people are struggling and he could have done more to help, but he didn't.”
According to Emerson, the poll data was weighted by gender, age, education and race and ethnicity, with each individual group having a higher margin of error due to the smaller sample size. The poll collected responses through landline phones in addition to an online panel. Women made up 47.7 percent of the poll's sample, while men made up 49.4 percent and nonbinary people made up 2.9 percent.