Yankee Poll Finds Malloy’s Job Approval Rating Climbing and Puts Chris Murphy as US Senate Front Runner

By Daniela Altimari On February 7, 2012 · 2 Comments

A Yankee Institute poll released this morning shows Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s job approval rating inching upward and broad support for Sunday liquor sales and abolishing teacher tenure, two issues likely to come up in the legislative session that begins tomorrow.

The new poll also puts Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy at the front of the pack of candidates running for U.S. Senate this year. Murphy tops Republican Linda McMahon by 9 percentage points and Republican Chris Shays by 6 percentage points.

Former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz leads McMahon by 3 points but would lose to Shays by 1 point, according to the poll.

The phone survey of 500 likely Connecticut voters was conducted on Feb. 1 and 2 by Pulse Opinion Research, a subsidiary of Rasmussen Reports. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

The Yankee Institute identifies itself as a non-partisan public policy center that advocates a free-market, small-government approach. The poll skewed slightly Republican, said the institute’s executive director, Fergus Cullen, the former chairman of the state Republican party in New Hampshire.

Twenty-eight percent of the voters surveyed identified themselves as Republicans, Cullen said. In Connecticut, 20 percent of registered voters are Republicans. Thirty-eight percent of the respondents identified as Democrats, a figure that mirrors the voter registration numbers.

Independents were significantly underrepresented in the Yankee poll: they made up 34 percent of the survey sample yet 43 percent of electorate is unaffiliated.

“So our sample was a little bit more to the right…than is the voter electorate based on registration,” Cullen said during a brief press conference at the Capitol this morning.

Yet, he notes, “these numbers are not particularly great for Republicans from a partisan standpoint.”

The state’s two U.S. Senators both have job approval ratings over 50 percent; Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s is 62 percent.

Malloy’s numbers are showing signs of rebounding from Yankee’s June survey, when 56 percent of those surveyed disapproved of the job he was doing (and 42 percent approved.)

In today’s survey, 51 percent approve and 46 disapprove of the job the governor is doing.

Connecticut voters didn’t like Malloy’s jaunt to Davos, Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum; 48 percent of those surveyed think he should have stayed home.

As far as issues likely to dominate the upcoming legislative session, voters approve Sunday liquor sales by a two-to-one margin. They also want to see teacher tenure abolished (61 to 24 percent) and expressed a general skepticism about teachers unions (63 percent said the unions “care more about protecting members’ jobs than about the quality of education.”)

Not surprisingly, the poll found most respondents don’t want higher taxes. Seventy percent of those surveyed said they think the state budget deficit should be entirely or mostly resolved through spending cuts, not tax hikes.

President Obama’s job approval barely tops 50 percent, but he would beat the two Republican front runners by a wide margin. Obama leads Mitt Romney, 50 to 37 percent and Newt Gingrich, 56 to 35 percent.

In fact, Gingrich is the single most unpopular politician in the survey, with 63 percent of those questioned viewing him unfavorably and just 28 percent viewing him favorably.

2 Responses to Yankee Poll Finds Malloy’s Job Approval Rating Climbing and Puts Chris Murphy as US Senate Front Runner

Jimbo says:

February 8, 2012 at 10:38 am

I guess there’s really no hope for this state. Connecticut- the new California.

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w9 form says:

February 9, 2012 at 12:06 pm

i love your blog, i have it in my rss reader and always like new things coming up from it.

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