Republican frontrunner Linda McMahon continues to cut into Democrat Richard Blumenthal's once-overwhelming popularity in the U.S. Senate race.
McMahon's strategy of ignoring her Republican opponents and targeting the once indomitable Blumenthal appears to be yielding dividends. She now lags just 10 percentage points behind the attorney general, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll, released this morning.
Blumenthal leads McMahon 50 to 40, according to the poll, compared with the 54 to 37 percentage point lead Blumenthal had less than three weeks ago. In January, Blumenthal topped McMahon 64 percent to 23 percent.
Most troubling for Blumenthal: Unaffiliated voters, a key group in Connecticut, seem to be moving toward McMahon.
"Independent
voters, the largest bloc of voters in Connecticut, are for the first time
evenly divided between Linda McMahon, who gets 46 percent, and Richchard Blumenthal, who
gets 44 percent,'' Doug Schwartz said in a press release accompanying the Q poll results. "Blumenthal led 54
- 35 percent among independent voters just three weeks ago.''
About a week before the GOP primary, Simmons trails McMahon by 17 percentage points. Simmons gets 30 percent of the Republican vote, compared with 47 for McMahon. That compared with the 52-25 point lead McMahon had in the July 16 Q poll.
"[As] McMahon focuses
on Blumenthal, she better watch her back,'' Schwartz said. "Rob Simmons has shown surprising strength among Republican voters after
jumping back into the primary contest barely two weeks ago. But it might be too little too late for
Simmons."
McMahon runs better against Blumenthal than Simmons - a change from the July 16 poll, when they were roughly at parity against the Democrat.
Weston broker Peter Schiff gets 14 percent of the GOP primary vote, according to the poll.
When asked which GOP candidate is more likely to win in November, 54 percent of likely Republican primary voters said McMahon, 25 percent said Simmons and 8 percent said Schiff.
The survey of 1,299 Connecticut registered voters was conducted from July 28 to Aug. 2. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.