CT poll shows support for ObamaCare crumbling

Definitely some interesting results.

Almost every question on this survey contains bad news for Democrats — and explains why Joe Lieberman wanted to slow down the process and work on incremental reforms.

An earlier poll (taken after the Senate passed its bill, and before the MA Senate election) showed Lieberman’s favorability rating way down, possibly because Lieberman angered liberals with his initial opposition to the health-care bill due to high costs, and then voted FOR the bill with special favors for Nebraska and Louisiana.

AG Richard Blumenthal has swamped the competition for Chris Dodd’s Senate seat since Dodd announced his retirement, but that may change significantly if Democrats insist on jamming this bill down America’s throat.

A Rasmussen poll taken after Dodd’s retirement announcement and before the MA vote showed Blumenthal with huge leads, but neither Blumenthal (currently CT Attorney General) nor his GOP opponents have taken a clear position on the health-care bill. It would be interesting to hear what Blumenthal and his strongest opponent (former Rep. Rob Simmons, R-CT2) have to say about health care.

After having lived in CT for 14 years, I’ve found some strange tendencies in elections here. This is the home of Yale, and even affluent voters (who ordinarily favor low-tax, pro-business Republicans elsewhere) seem to vote Democrat out of “charity”, a desire to “share” their wealth with the less fortunate elsewhere in the nation. Yet, they have had Republican Governors for 16 years (Rowland for 2 1/2 terms, Jodi Rell for 1 1/2 terms) who continually fight to reduce State spending by vetoing overbloated budgets from the Democrat-controlled State legislature. CT voters seem to be fine with the Federal government raising taxes on the whole country, but not with the State government raising State taxes. Taxes for thee, not for me.

Blue-state MA voters saw Scott Brown as a huge opportunity to block ObamaCare, and this Yankee poll shows CT voters even MORE opposed than MA voters to ObamaCare. But with Brown soon to be in the Senate, will CT voters decide that THEIR Senator has to be on Brown’s side (not only on health care, but also on Federal spending and military preparedness, as Rob Simmons advocates), or is Brown alone enough to stop ObamaCare, and will they support Blumenthal?

In MA, Martha Coakley (D) was State Attorney General, Scott Brown (R) was a State Senator, who, in addition to opposing ObamaCare, also supports increased military spending. He was 20 points down a month before the election, but surged to win in the end.

In CT, Blumenthal (D) is State Attorney General, Rob Simmons (R) is a three-term former U.S. Congressman. His Eastern CT district is mostly rural and suburban, with a large naval base (Groton), which Simmons has used to promote increased military spending. He is now about 20 points down in the polls, with the election over 9 months away. Any parallels here?

Steve Z on January 22, 2010 at 1:01 PM

Blumenthal can be beaten. He is as bad an AG as Martha Coakley. Maybe a better campaigner, but any of the Republicans running can beat him if they run a positive, issues-oriented campaign like Scott Brown and Bob McDonnell and Chris Christe did.

Agreed. There’s another issue that can be used against Blumenthal in CT. In recent years, several nuclear power plants have been shut down, and new natural-gas fired plants have been built to supply the needed electricity, but this has caused natural-gas prices to rise in a cold state where most homes are heated with natural gas.

There was a recent project to build a large LNG (liquefied-natural-gas) terminal in the Long Island Sound, to provide natural gas imported by tankers to Long Island and southern Connecticut, which was blocked practically single-handedly by Blumenthal, supposedly for “environmental” reasons. People in the energy industry hate Blumenthal, and we really do need the gas, so this issue could be used by Republicans to hurt Blumenthal. Now that the Supreme Court has allowed corporations to run campaign ads, the natural-gas industry should be all over this issue!

By the way, is rockmom from CT? Where?

Steve Z on January 22, 2010 at 1:24 PM