Republican Tom Foley is quickly closing the gap against Democrat Dannel Malloy in a race for governor that is now too close to call, the latest Quinnipiac University poll shows.
Malloy is ahead by 3 percentage points, but the margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points makes the battle too close to predict in an increasingly nasty race.
One of the key shifts is that the all-important unaffiliated voters - the largest voting bloc in Connecticut - have moved toward Foley in recent weeks. The race had previously been a flat-footed tie among independents, but the latest survey shows Foley ahead by 6 percentage points among independents.
A longtime business executive from Greenwich, Foley has poured more than $4 million of his own money into the race against Malloy, who is receiving up to $6 million in public financing.
The latest poll shows Malloy ahead by 45 percent to 42 percent with 12 percent undecided. Another 22 percent say they could change their minds before election day on November 2.
In the previous poll that was released in mid-September, Malloy had been leading by 9 percentage points with 8 percent still undecided and 26 percent saying that they could change their mind before the election.
While many politicians and political observers are obsessed with polls in the heat of the campaign season, Malloy's campaign manager says he views it differently.
In response to the survey showing that Foley is closing the gap, campaign manager Dan Kelly, said, "We don't pay much attention to polls. The same poll had Dan down by 3 the day before the primary, a race he won by 14 points. Dan tells us to campaign as if we're in second place, 10 points down. So that's what we do.''
Malloy and Foley have clashed sharply in television commercials in recent weeks, and several new ads are hitting the airwaves today.
Foley is broadcasting a new commercial this week that was being shown Wednesday on the morning news programs. The ad mentions that Malloy sought a pay increase as Stamford's mayor, saying, "Malloy raised taxes year after year. ... Dan Malloy: a career politician whose policies kill jobs.''
Foley has particularly focused on the loss of 13,843 jobs in Stamford since the peak employment year of 2000. Malloy has repeatedly stated in commercials that he helped create thousands of jobs as mayor, but state labor statistics show that there was a net loss of more than 5,000 jobs during his 14-year tenure leading the city. In addition, the unemployment rate - which measures the employment of Stamford residents as opposed to the overall number of jobs in the city - jumped by 58 percent during the Malloy years.
In a new ad, Malloy focuses on employees who had once worked at a factory that Foley owned at The Bibb Company in Columbus, Georgia. The company's longtime textile mill closed about two years after Foley left the firm as chief executive officer in 1996. Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele aired a similar commercial during the primary, but Foley countered that some of the workers who appeared in Fedele's commercial had never worked at the factory and others thought they were being interviewed for a documentary about the mill.
In another new, anti-Foley commercial by the Democratic Governors Association that aired before 7 a.m. Wednesday, a narrator says that Foley "devastated a community and thousands of lives'' in Georgia as he and his company "made millions.''
Folely is also airing a 30-second commercial that features his wife, Leslie Fahrenkopf Foley, an attorney who attended Yale University and the University of Virginia who says that she has worked with many impressive people during her career. She adds that there has been "no one more impressive than Tom Foley - so I married him.''
The latest Q poll was released at about 6:40 a.m. Wednesday.