Lamont Leads Fazio 55-38 in Connecticut Governor's Race, Quinnipiac Poll Finds, With Three Weeks to Go

The short version: With three weeks left before Connecticut votes on Nov. 3, Gov. Ned Lamont holds a wide lead over his Republican challenger, state Sen. Ryan Fazio — and the clearest snapshot of the race remains the Quinnipiac University Connecticut poll. Quinnipiac University reported that its poll of likely voters, released Sept. 16, found Lamont at 55 percent to Fazio's 38 percent, with 5 percent undecided. Political Wire summarized the same poll the day it came out, and The Inner City News reported the full crosstabs, including a wide gender gap and the fact that nearly half of voters had not heard enough about Fazio to judge him. No newer public poll has displaced it as the race's reference point.

The numbers underneath the headline

The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,288 likely voters between Sept. 8 and Sept. 14, and Political Wire noted its margin of error at plus-or-minus 3.8 percentage points. The partisan splits are exactly what a Democrat running for a third term in Connecticut would want: Quinnipiac University reported Democrats backing Lamont 93 to 6 percent, Republicans backing Fazio 86 to 10 percent, and independents — the voters who actually decide Connecticut races — breaking for Lamont 48 to 42 percent. The gender gap is the loudest number in the poll. Women supported Lamont 64 to 30 percent, according to Quinnipiac University, while men divided almost evenly, with 47 percent for Fazio and 44 percent for Lamont. A challenger can survive losing one of those groups; losing women by 34 points while only splitting men is a much harder math problem.

The name-recognition problem

Fazio's deepest hole is not ideology, it is familiarity. Quinnipiac University reported that 50 percent of likely voters had a favorable opinion of Lamont and 36 percent an unfavorable one, while Fazio stood at 28 percent favorable and 25 percent unfavorable — with 45 percent of voters saying they had not heard enough about him. Doug Schwartz, the Quinnipiac University Poll director, said in the release that Lamont seems favored to win a third term as Fazio fights a name-recognition handicap in a predominantly Democratic state. Half of voters also approved of the job Lamont is doing as governor, according to the poll's summary in Pluribus News, while just 28 percent approved of President Trump's job performance in Connecticut — a drag at the top of the Republican ticket that Fazio cannot control and Lamont's campaign works to attach to him.

Cost of living is the race

Asked to name the most important issue in choosing a governor, voters put their wallets first, and Lamont leads most where it matters most. Quinnipiac University reported that cost of living topped the list at 27 percent and the economy followed at 23 percent, ahead of taxes at 11 percent, immigration at 10 percent and health care at 8 percent. Among voters who named cost of living as their top issue, Lamont led 63 to 29 percent; among economy-first voters, he led 58 to 33 percent. That is the finding Lamont's campaign leaned on: The Inner City News reported the Lamont campaign saying in response to the poll that voters are focused on the issues that matter to their families, and arguing the choice is between Lamont's vision for moving Connecticut forward and a challenger who has supported the president's agenda. For Fazio, the counterargument starts with those same two issues — if the cost of living is the top concern, an incumbent who leads on it anyway is telling voters something, and Fazio has three weeks to change what it is.

The other poll — and the campaign ahead

Fazio's campaign has never accepted the Quinnipiac picture. The Inner City News reported that the Fazio campaign pointed to its own internal survey by Cygnal, conducted among 600 likely voters between Sept. 9 and Sept. 11, which showed Lamont ahead by seven points on the initial ballot — and showed Fazio edging ahead 45 to 44 once voters were given contrasts between the candidates. Internal polls are campaign documents, not neutral measurements, and an informed-ballot test is designed to show what a race could look like after weeks of advertising rather than what it looks like today. But the Cygnal numbers do identify Fazio's only real path: the 45 percent of voters who do not know him yet have to meet him on his campaign's terms before they meet him on Lamont's. The first gubernatorial debate between the two men is scheduled for Oct. 22, co-hosted by CT Insider and WFSB, according to Connecticut news listings — the single biggest introduction Fazio will get.

Voting itself is changing this year

Whoever persuades those voters, the mechanics of voting in Connecticut are different this fall. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas announced on Oct. 9 a $1 million statewide voter-information campaign running from Oct. 12 through the Nov. 3 general election, aimed at all 169 municipalities and explaining the three ways to vote: absentee ballot, early in-person voting, or on Election Day. This is the first Connecticut general election in which every eligible voter may request an absentee ballot without stating a reason, after Public Act 26-42 removed the old excuse requirement, and the state's early-voting period runs Oct. 19 through Nov. 1. The campaign's ads, produced in English and Spanish, feature local registrars and town clerks rather than Thomas herself and point voters to MyVote.CT.gov. A electorate that can vote over two full weeks is one more variable in a race where the challenger needs everything to break his way late.

What it means

Seventeen points is not a lead a challenger erases with one good week, and the structure underneath — independents leaning Lamont, women breaking heavily for him, the top two issues favoring the incumbent — is harder to move than a single headline number. Fazio has won a special election and two general elections in a closely divided Senate district, so he has beaten tough math before, and his campaign's whole strategy is visible in the gap between the Quinnipiac result and its own internal one: introduce, define, close. Lamont's strategy is the opposite — make the race a referendum on a governor half the state approves of, in a state where the president sits at 28 percent. Three weeks, one debate, and a new early-voting electorate will decide which reading of this race was right. Follow the rest of our Connecticut coverage in the Local News hub.