A new Quinnipiac poll of Connecticut voters gave Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy high job approval ratings and said Murphy would beat GOP challenger Matthew Corey by a 28-point margin if the election for the Senate seat were held today.
Sixty-two percent of the registered voters polled said they approved of the way Murphy is doing his job and 28 percent did not. This is the highest approval rating the freshman senator has had in a Quinnipiac poll.
Murphy had a 53-31 approval rating in a June, 2016 poll. In previous Quinnipiac polls, the senator’s approval rating ranged from 50 t0 55 percent.
Blumenthal had a 61-32 job approval rating in this latest Quinnipiac poll. In previous polls by the university, the senator’s approval rating ranged from a high of 64 percent, in March of 2015, to a low of 49 percent in March of 2011.
Blumenthal is not up for re-election this year.
In the poll released Thursday, 59 percent of voters said they would vote to re-elect Murphy, and 31 percent said they would cast a ballot for Corey.
Murphy was ahead 91-3 percent among Democrats and 51 – 35 percent among independent voters. Republican voters backed Corey 78-14 percent.
But 67 percent of those polled said they have not heard enough about Corey to form an opinion of the candidate.
There was a gender gap and an age gap among the voters, with women (65 percent) and younger voters (67 percent) more likely to say they will vote for Murphy in November’s general election. Non-white voters were also strongly supportive of Murphy over Corey, 77-12 percent.
The poll was taken from Aug. 16 to Aug. 21 and surveyed 1,029 Connecticut voters. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
The poll also measured President Donald Trump’s approval rating, with 67 percent of Connecticut voters disapproving and 30 percent approving.
The poll was conducted before the full impact could be felt from Tuesday’s conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on tax and bank fraud charges, and the decision by the president’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to plead guilty to charges of tax fraud and campaign finance violations.