A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows Connecticut’s gubernatorial race remains tight – with Democratic incumbent Dannel Malloy at 43 percent and Republican Tom Foley at 42 percent.
With the race this tight, Quinnipiac Poll Director Douglas Schwartz says the conventional wisdom is that conservative third-party candidate Joe Visconti, who is coming in at 9 percent in the poll, is probably taking votes away from Republican Foley.
“But that’s not what we’re finding," Schwartz said. "We’re asking Visconti supporters who their second choice would be, and they’re pretty much evenly split between Malloy and Foley.”
Schwartz says when they re-run numbers without Visconti in the matchup, the race is still a tie.
“My interpretation of that is that he is a protest vote against the major party candidates,” said Schwartz.
That’s because the poll shows Malloy and Foley aren’t very popular.
Once again in this poll, more people had an unfavorable view of Malloy than had a favorable one. And Foley’s favorability ratings continue to drop. For the first time, more people polled had a negative view of him than a positive one.
The telephone survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
