There’s a discrepancy in two polls released Thursday on Connecticut’s November election for governor. The two polls are the first to be released ahead of the fall election.
The Quinnipiac University poll has the Democratic candidate Ned Lamont 13 points ahead of the Republican candidate Bob Stefanowski. But it’s still early.
“Many voters are not paying attention at this point to the race, but they will,” says Quinnipiac University Poll Director Doug Schwartz. He says it appears that Lamont is leading Stefanowski by double digits because of support from women and Connecticut’s status as a blue state.
But the Sacred Heart University/Hearst Connecticut Media poll has the gubernatorial candidates running neck-in-neck. Gary Rose, a political scientist at Sacred Heart, says he’s not surprised by the discrepancy.
“I would be inclined to say that even though Lamont is 13 points ahead in the Quinnipiac Poll, it’s nevertheless quite possible that a lot of those voters are simply saying Lamont because maybe they’ve heard about Lamont. But they haven’t seen enough about Bob Stefanowski to really draw a conclusion.”
Sacred Heart polled 502 Connecticut voters, while Quinnipiac polled 1,029 voters. The polls both have a margin of error of plus or minus about 4 percentage points.
Since the August 14 party primaries, Lamont has been active on the campaign trail and has been running televisions ads. Stefanowski has yet to hold a campaign event, and has yet to run a television ad.
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