Connecticut Miscellany

-Dan Malloy continues to be one of the most unpopular Governors in the country in our polling. Only 33% of voters approve of him to 51% who disapprove. Out of more than 40 sitting Governors we've polled on across the country the only ones with worse numbers in our most recent polls are Bev Perdue of North Carolina, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, Pat Quinn of Illinois, and Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania.

Malloy only barely gets over 50% approval even with Democrats, at 52/33. Independents disapprove of him by a more than 2:1 margin, 25/53, and with Republicans he's at 15/73. Malloy would trail a hypothetical GOP opponent for reelection right now by a 46/39 margin. Certainly he has plenty of time to turn it around before November 2014 but for now he's not in a great position.

-Richard Blumenthal continues to be Connecticut's most popular major politician. 49% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 36% who disapprove, numbers pretty comparable to where he was when we last polled the state in September and found him at 52/34.

Joe Lieberman's approval numbers have seen a fair amount of improvement as he heads for the door. 41% of voters give him good marks to 43% who disapprove. Those still aren't good numbers but they compare quite favorably to the first poll we did after his retirement announcement, in March of 2011, when we found only 29% of voters approving of him to 58% who disapproved.

Lieberman continues to be very unpopular with Democrats. Only 26% approve of him, while 55% give him poor marks. But his numbers have seen significant recovery with Republicans (56/26) and independents (46/41).

-55% of Connecticut voters support gay marriage being legal in their state to 33% who disapprove of it. The most striking crosstab on those numbers is with voters under 30, 68% of whom support it to 18% opposed. 70% say that gay marriage's legalization has not had any impact on their lives while 16% say it's had a positive effect and 14% a negative one. Even among voters who oppose gay marriage, 69% grant that it hasn't actually had any adverse impact on them.

When you expand the discussion to civil unions in Connecticut 88% of voters support some form of legal recognition for same sex couples to only 11% who are opposed. Even among Republicans 83% support either gay marriage or civil unions.

-Finally we took a look at Connecticut's two iconic college basketball coaches: Geno Auriemma for the women and Jim Calhoun for the men. Auriemma has a much better image in the state and has numbers any of the state's major politicians would take in a second. 57% of voters see him favorably to only 10% with a negative opinion. Calhoun's numbers are decent too but not really in the same league- 35% rate him favorably to 20% unfavorably.

Full results here

Comments

[jschmidt]

Amazing that do nothing Blumy can sucker 49% into thinking he is doing a good job. Just proves if you do nothing you can coast as he;s been doing for years. Malloy is a mess. Walks into a deficit spending 900 million more for an unneeded busway we can't afford, makes no cuts to the size of govt, raises taxes and expects everyone to say he is doing a great job.

[Janet Lynn]

Who did this poll? I firmly disagree with many of the numbers. Did you poll ALL people or mostly Democrats?

[David Avillo]

Time to get Peter Lumaj prepared to run against this dumb... who is destroying our great state.

[James Rhodes]

This poll is complete BS; Connecticut is not in favor of same sex marriage. I don't know anyone around here who would support that nonsense.

[David]

May I offer some input on your gay marriage question order?

The "personal impact" query needs to come before your 2 questions regarding support/opposition. If you ask twice about support/opposition and then ask about personal impact, there is an inherent incentive for the respondent to report that his personal experience is consistent with, and thus supports, his general stance on the issue.

I think the personal impact question is a good one and I am glad to see that you have done it several times now. Generally, PPP gets more people claiming a personal impact one way or the other than did the Des Moines Register in its poll of April 2009 (92% said "no impact"). Please consider ordering the question as per above.

[chris]

In replying to "jschimdt" post Blumenthal was Attorney General in CT for years and the voters seem to like him. As for Malloy thats what he did as mayor of Stamford for years: raise taxes. I still don't get how he lasted as Mayor of Stamford for that long and even beat an incumbent Republican Mayor in 1995.

[MrLogical]

Can't wait to send him to the unemployment line.

Too bad CT doesn't have a recall provision in the state's constitution.

[Mike]

A Generic Republican mean one in the level of McMahon?

If she loses in 2012, I would not be surprised if she try to be Governor in 2014.