Poll: Malloy approval up; Murphy leads challengers

Hartford – A new opinion poll from the right-leaning Yankee Institute for Public Policy shows Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's approval rating modestly rebounding from its June low.

Fifty-one percent of those surveyed approve of Malloy's job as governor and 46 percent disapprove. In a similar survey in June, only 42 percent of those polled approved and 56 percent disapproved of the governor.

The phone survey of 500 likely Connecticut voters was conducted early this month for Yankee Institute by Pulse Opinion Research. It is the fifth voters' survey done by the East Hartford-based institute.

The poll also found U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, D-5th, leading all Republican opponents in match-ups for the Senate seat of retiring Joe Lieberman.

On policy issues, the poll found that voters strongly support repealing the ban on Sunday alcohol sales (62 percent to 31 percent); are for abolishing the tenure system for public school teachers (61 percent to 24 percent), and believe that teacher salaries should be mostly tied to classroom evaluations and how well their students do, rather than a teacher's years of experience and formal education (53 percent to 28 percent).

First-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal has a higher approval rating (62 percent to 31 percent) than the Independent Lieberman (53 percent to 43 percent).

Full results of the survey can be found here.