McMahon leads Simmons, Schiff in Q poll

Anticipating this morning's poll results from Quinnipiac University, members of Republican Senate hopeful Linda McMahon's campaign team said they were "cautiously optimistic" that she would be near neck-and-neck with former Rep. Rob Simmons.

They could have afforded a little more bragging.

The Q Poll finds McMahon has surged to a 10-percentage-point lead over Simmons among Republican voters, 44 percent to 34 percent, erasing the deficits that had plagued McMahon, the former head of World Wrestling Entertainment making her first run for elective office.

As recently as January, the same polling experts found Simmons, a three-term Republican congressman from Stonington, with a 37-27 percent lead over McMahon.

But McMahon has bombarded Connecticut voters with direct mail advertising and television spots, and the three-way field, which also includes financier Peter Schiff, played to a draw in their only televised debate.

McMahon's resources, said Douglas Schwartz, the director of the Quinnipiac Poll, are the primary reason that the candidate has been able to upend Simmons, who spent months shoring up support from state lawmakers and Republican town committees in an effort to lock up the nomination before McMahon's entrance into the race.

"What explains Linda McMahon's rise in the polls? Money," Schwartz said in a written statement. "She is the only Senate candidate on TV right now. She quickly has become as well-known and well-liked among Republicans as the former frontrunner for the Republican nomination," Simmons.

Potential bad news awaits all three Republicans in the general election in November, where Democratic front-runner Richard Blumenthal holds commanding leads of at least 2 to 1 over each Republican contender.
Blumenthal holds an 81 - 6 percent lead over primary opponent Merrick Alpert, and would drub all three Republicans with more than 60 percent of the vote, the poll found.

There are points of light for Simmons, however. Relatively large percentages of voters still say they do not know enough about either he or McMahon to form an opinion, and a plurality of voters (46 percent) said they would prefer a candidate who is forced to compete to raise money, rather than to spend out of his or her own fortune. McMahon has accepted some small donations but has largely paid for her extensive campaign operation with her own funds, which are derived from the family's pro wrestling and entertainment empire.Meanwhile, though discontent over incumbent Sen. Chris Dodd and the partisan gridlock in Washington may have encouraged candidates to get into the race, running in opposition to the Obama administration's policies doesn't look like a promising path to victory in Connecticut, the Q Poll found.

Fifty-six percent of those surveyed said the next senator from Connecticut should "generally support" the administration's policies, compared to just 36 percent who said the opposite.