The first snapshot of Connecticut’s U.S. Senate race shows Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a two-term Democrat, with leads ranging from 10 points to 16 points in matchups with Republicans Themis Klarides, Peter Lumaj and Leora Levy.
The poll conducted by Emerson College for WTNH-News 8 and The Hill is the first since Blumenthal was nominated without opposition and Klarides, the former state House minority leader, won the GOP convention endorsement.
With the race yet to engage the broader electorate, the poll will give Klarides support for her claim to be the most electable Republican in a general election matchup with Blumenthal.
The poll gave Blumenthal a 50%- 40% advantage over Klarides, compared to 51%-35% over Lumaj and 52%-36% over Levy. Undecideds account for the balance.
Blumenthal won the open seat in 2010 with a 55%-43% victory over Linda McMahon, who spent a record $50 million on the race. He was reelected in 2016, beating the poorly funded Dan Carter 58% to 35%.
The last Republican to win a U.S. Senate race in Connecticut was Lowell P. Weicker Jr. in 1982.
The survey offered no assessment of who among the three Republicans is currently favored for the GOP nomination, which will be settled in a primary on Aug. 9. Klarides won the convention endorsement with 56%.
Klarides, who did not seek reelection to the General Assembly in 2020 after 22 years in the House, is the only one of three who has held elective office.
Levy is a Republican National Committee member who failed to win a state Senate nomination in a special election in 2021. Lumaj was the Republican nominee for secretary of the state in 2014 and ran for governor in 2018, failing to qualify for a primary.
The poll of 1,000 voters was conducted May 10 and 11, several days after the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions. It was based on calls to landlines, mobile phones and an online panel. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Note: Klarides is married to Gregory B. Butler, who is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Connecticut Public.