Poll-tergeist

Once again, it is time for me to do my Happy Quinnipiac Dance.



This time around, the Quinniputians are laser-focused on the imminent CT Democratic primary, and reporting only on likely Democratic primary voters, so there's none of the three-way general election data I'm craving. But what numbers they have are interesting and encouraging.

Back to the bulletpointmobile!


o THE number is very, very good: Lamont leads Lieberman 54-41 - this is even better than the 51-41 number reported by the usually pro-Republican Rasmussen poll a few weeks ago, and is a 9-point improvement over his 51-47 lead just two weeks ago. I would love to see the three-way number with Lamont facing Lieberman and A Sacrificial Republican To Be Named Later, but I guess I'll have to wait.

o Lamont's support improves as income and education go up. He's up 51-43 among likely Dem primary voters with no college degree, and up 57-39 among voters with one. As annual household income increases from <$30k, to $30-50k, to $50-100k, to >$100k, Lamont's support goes from 46%, to 51%, to 56%, to 58%.

o Lamont's "haven't heard enough" number is down to 19%, down 16 points from the last poll. Assuming everyone else stayed put, 10 of the 16 formed a favorable opinion of him, 4 formed a mixed one, and only 1 formed an unfavorable one. That's a pretty damn good percentage there. Of course, these are likely Dem primary voters, so they're more likely to be informed at this stage of the game. Again, I would love to see the overall stats on this for the general CT population, where the "haven't heard enough" number was right around 50%. I suspect that the NYT endorsement gave Lamont's name recognition a big boost, and if so, it will probably spill over to the CT population in general, which is great news for Ned.

o Lieberman's favorability has actually improved; from 35% favorable and 39% unfavorable in the July 20th poll, to 37-34 in the new one. If I had to guess, I would say it's probably due to the Clinton and Courant endorsements.

o Lieberman does better with women; Lamont does better with men. Lieberman's favorable-unfavorable numbers are 37-37 among men, and 37-31 among women. Lamont's numbers are 50-13 among men, and 42-16 among women. This really surprises me, and the only possible explanations I can think of are that women really like the Big Dog, and/or a lot of them were snowed by Joe's richly undeserved endorsements from NARAL and Planned Parenthood.

o Lamont's supporters really hate the war. When asked whether Lieberman's support for the war was one of their reasons for voting for Lamont, 50% said it was one of their reasons, and 44% said it was their main reason. 38% said Lieberman's CT For Lieberman Plan B was one of their reasons for voting for Lamont (only 7% gave it as their main reason, however), and only 21% said that Bill Clinton's support was one of their reasons for voting for Lieberman (only 2% said it was their main reason - who are these people???). Unfortunately, Quinnpiac did not ask about the impact of the NYT's endorsement of Lamont, or the Hartford Courant's endorsement of Lieberman.

Overall, these are great numbers for Lamont. He's kicking Lieberman's ass head-to-head, and 80% of the likely primary voters know enough about him to have an opinion of him, and a mostly (58%) favorable one at that. I think his two-week surge in recognition and popularity is partly attributable to the NYT endorsement, and partly due to voters paying more attention as the election draws closer. I think at this point, Ned mainly has to make sure he doesn't get his ass whipped on turnout, and I'm expecting that there's enough of a "passion gap" between him and Joe to make that unlikely.

(Parenthetic comment: I wonder how much the College Republicans will actually help Joe. They'll need to be on their best behavior and pretend to like Clinton and remember not to call any of the Dem voters unhinged barking moonbats.)