Despite winning their party’s political conventions Saturday, Republican Tom Foley and Democrat Dannel Malloy did not see substantial change in their poll ratings in the governor’s race.
That was the analysis Thursday from Douglas Schwartz, the director of the Quinnipiac University poll.
“We didn’t see any bounce for Malloy or Foley,” Schwartz told reporters Thursday.
Foley continued to lead the Republican field by 26 points in the latest Q poll – the exact lead that he had in the previous poll more than two months ago. Malloy, despite winning the party’s convention endorsement for the second time, remains behind Democratic challenger Ned Lamont by 17 percentage points, according to the poll.
Overall, 65 percent of registered Democrats said they did not know enough about Malloy to form an opinion. That rating came even though Malloy has now won the party’s convention endorsement for governor in 2006 and 2010. He raised and spent $4 million before losing the August 2006 primary to New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, who later lost in the general election to Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell by 63 percent to 35 percent.
“It says that he hasn’t gotten better known,” Schwartz said of Malloy. “It was a problem that he had four years ago – getting better known outside Fairfield County. Now, he will have the matching funds so that he can spend some money on advertising that will help him get better known.”
Depending on how much Lamont spends, Malloy – who became the first person in state history to qualify for public funding in the governor’s race – could receive as much as $2.5 million in public funds for the primary.
Although Malloy has been behind Lamont in the polls for the past six months, his strategist, Roy Occhiogrosso, say there are many differences between this campaign and the one four years ago. Malloy had predicted back then that he would defeat DeStefano, saying that the New Haven mayor had wasted money on statewide television advertisements that reached all voters instead of targeting Democratic voters with a history of voting in primaries – which was his strategy.
“Dan has a lot of things going for him this time that weren’t in place in 2006,” Occhiogrosso said. “More money, more time to spend on the campaign trail, more of the spotlight from the media, a sharper contrast with his opponent, and strong labor support.”
On the Republican side, Foley remained in the lead with 37 percent of those polled, compared to 11 percent for Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele of Stamford and 5 percent for longtime business executive Oz Griebel of Simsbury. Among Republicans, 42 percent remain undecided. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 6.5 percentage points in the Republican primary.
With a multi-million-dollar fortune from his business career, Foley has poured $2 million of his own money into a campaign that has been broadcasting television commercials on a steady basis.
Despite Foley’s lead, the race is still in flux because of the high number of undecided and the lack of name recognition among the candidates. Among registered Republicans, 58 percent said they did not know enough about Foley to form an opinion. In addition, 78 percent said they did not know enough about Fedele, who has been lieutenant governor for more than three years and served in the legislature for 10 years as a representative from Stamford.
Griebel, a Dartmouth College graduate who is on leave as the CEO of the MetroHartford Alliance, is even less known to the general public. Among registered Republicans, 88 percent did not know enough about him to form an opinion. Among Republican women, the figure increases to 91 percent.
In the Democratic race, Lamont has been consistently ahead of Malloy – over the past four Quinnipiac polls that date back six months to November 2009. Lamont was ahead of Malloy by 14 percentage points when Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz was still in the race. Since then, Lamont has been ahead by 16, 10, and 17 percentage points over the past three polls.
Lamont has not said how much he will spend on the race, but many insiders expect that it will be millions. Lamont spent about $17 million of his own money in the 2006 race against U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, which included an upset victory in the primary and then a defeat by 10 percentage points in the general election.