A new Courant/UCONN poll out this morning shows Gov. Rell's lead down by six points, from 56% to 50%, following her first debate with John DeStefano. DeStefano didn't gain, however--his support stayed at 28%.
Monika McDermott, the poll's director, said DeStefano clearly developed momentum from a strong performance in the debate.
"He didn't seal the deal, but he did give some people pause," McDermott said Thursday.(Keating)
The next debate is Wednesday at 7pm, on WVIT (Ch. 30).
Source
Keating, Christopher. "Rell's Lead Down 6 Points." Hartford Courant 13 October, 2006.
9 comments:
Jodi Rell. Rudy Giuliani. Tonight in Stamford. Be there.
Giuliani stumped for Rowland last time around, too. He's just another political whore looking to boost his own stock and trade.
I see Rell losing the ground, but they sure didn't flip right over to JDS. Too bad there isn't another viable choice out there. Granny Rell will still end up getting 60% simply because she is the lesser of two evils. But, she was right to want only a limited number of debates. She isn't very good thinking on her feet.
It's funny, usually the number of undecided voters goes DOWN as an election gets closer, not up. Definitely good news for Green Party candidate Cliff Thornton. Rell/DeStefano has become as an appealing a leadership contest as Bush/Gore in 2000; however, instead of yielding the lower turnout that one would usually expect in that sort of election (like the less than 50% turnout in the US Presidential race), plenty of people will still show up to vote this time due to the interest in the US Congressional Elections. The question remains will they begrudgingly accept picking one of two choices they dislike, will they not vote in that particular race, or will they protest by voting for a third party.
Another interesting tidbit: if this trend in the polls were to continue on course for two more debates, the numbers would be Rell 36% to DeStefano 28%, leaving another 36% undecided, enough for a third party to (theoretically) win the election. Of course there is no reasonable basis on which to assume that Rell's numbers will drop a whole 6% after each debate, and certainly no reason to assume anyone (last of all a third party candidate) would have the monopoly of coverage required to grab all undecided voters.
However, I still find that arithmetic quite amusing, as it reveals that there may be an opening appearing in CT state politics that has not been present at least a decade. There is a possibility that lightning will strike on election day, and many of the independent moderates and progressives in this state who took Lamont to victory in the primary against historically insurmountable odds will have an epiphany and vote for Thornton, possibly getting him into double digits. With polls showing Rell tanking and DeStefano stagnating, you never know...
Shadow, kind of tough for the trend to continue for two more debates, when there is only one left. I know you're a green, but reading the newspaper isn't really killing a tree - it's already dead.
people dropping from Jodi without jumping immedialely to DeStefano seems reasonable. So now that means they'll take a close look at him. Given that the head of the CBIA, a Republican, has endorsed him DeStefano has a chance but how much his poll numbers will move remains a mystery to be honest.
One of the more frustrating moments of this campaign occured earlier today for me. While Cliff and I waited in the front room at Channel 30 for our tv time consolation prize - 15 minutes on Tom Monahan's Newsmaker - in walked Herb Sheperdson and Derek Slap. Cliff and I were escorted into the main studio to do a recording for Sunday morning at 6:30, while Slap and Sheperdson went into another room to discuss Wednesday night's prime time debate.
If I had never felt before like there was one water fountain for the Greens and one water fountain for the two main parties, boy, that moment this morning sure reinforced that concept.
Open the debates. Open democracy. This exclusion is not what soldiers in Iraq are fighting for.
This could be a MOE wobble, espcially as the DeStefano number didn't move at all
The Hartford Courant poll is not an accurate poll....it is of REGISTERED voters rather than LIKELY voters. Look to the other polls as a more accurate measure of how this race is going.
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