The first public poll to be released before Connecticut’s August 14 party primaries finds Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton leading the field in the GOP race for governor. The survey of Connecticut Republicans has Boughton with 34 percent support.
Boughton’s lead puts him 14 points ahead of his closest rival in the five-way race. Bob Stefanowski, a former business executive from Madison, is second with 20 percent support. Former hedge fund manager David Stemerman of Greenwich and former Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst are virtually tied with about 14.5 percent support each, while Steve Obsitnik, an entrepreneur from Westport, had the support of 11.6 percent of respondents.
Matt Hennessy is the managing director of Tremont Public Advisors, the federal lobbying firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and Hartford, who conducted the survey. He says the result indicates that a winner might emerge from the GOP primary with less than majority support.
“Whoever is going to win is going to win, you know, with between 25 and 35 percent of the vote is what it looks like.”
He says that might be a problem in November’s general election.
“The challenge for anybody coming out of the primary is how do you rally Republicans and unaffiliated who are Republican-leaning when you only came out with a small sliver of the vote.”
The largest voting bloc in Connecticut is unaffiliated voters, numbering about 831,000. About 790,000 are registered Democrats and only 452,000 are registered Republicans.
The online poll surveyed more than 1,000 Connecticut Republican voters. It has an error rate of plus or minus 3 percent. The poll did not ask questions about the Democratic primary contest between Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont and Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim.
