With the election two days away, Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont is poised to repel Republican challenger Bob Stefanowski’s run at the office for a second time, if the polls are accurate.

A rematch of the 2018 race for governor, Stefanowski may lose by more on his second attempt than the 3% margin four years ago — recent polling from Quinnipiac University and WTNH/The Hill/Emerson College has shown Lamont leading Stefanowski by 11-15 points and Independent candidate Rob Hotaling polling at about 1%.

Doug Schwartz, the Associate Vice President and Director of the Quinnipiac Poll, said Lamont did have almost as large a lead in 2018, “and then Stefanowski closed the gap,” bringing his deficit down to 8% and then 4% in QU’s two final polls. Schwartz hasn’t seen the same narrowing in the 2022 race.

“It was a different dynamic (in 2018) in the sense of, Stefanowski gained ground during the campaign but still came up short, versus this time around in the couple of polls that we’ve done in September and October, it’s been a stable race, and Lamont’s had a big lead,” Schwartz said. “It was 17 points then 15 points; I wouldn’t call that narrowing.”

Schwartz said QU’s polling question does not include Hotaling.

“Our standard for asking about third-party candidates is, if we think they’re likely to have a significant impact on the outcome of the election,” Schwartz said. “In our judgment, we didn’t. Polls that don’t name a third-party candidate are generally more accurate than the ones that do historically.”

Schwartz added that oftentimes voters decide last minute they would rather vote for one of the major party candidates “that has a real chance of winning.”

As for demographic trends in this year’s election, Schwartz highlighted the gender gap — Lamont is polling about 30 points better with women than Stefanowski. He said the gap “helps explain the big Lamont lead.”

Money has been an issue in the race, with three wealthy businessmen running. Hotaling has spent more than $43,000 on his campaign, whereas Lamont has spent almost $15 million and Stefanowski more than $9 million.

Hotaling, a senior Vice President at Webster Bank and a Cheshire resident, has joined his major party opponents on the debate stage twice. It’s unclear whether he will siphon votes from Lamont or Stefanowski, but during Tuesday’s debate, he was more critical of the Republican than the governor. He appealed to the largest swath of registered voters, unaffiliated, at 41%, saying they should vote for the Independent candidate.

Stefanowski, a Madison businessman, has cast himself as a centrist, repeatedly saying he is a “fiscal conservative and social moderate” on the campaign trail. But he has faced criticisms for playing to the conservative, Trump-supporting side of the GOP, especially in his reluctance to directly confront the election-denying wing of his party.

In 2018, Stefanowski also ran on the Independent Party line. He attempted to do the same this year, but was stifled, as the party chair broke a 79-79 tie between Hotaling and Stefanowski at the caucus in favor of Hotaling.

Lamont, a Greenwich businessman, has run on his record managing the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and on the state’s projected $6 billion surplus. Just as state Democrats have questioned Stefanowski’s past as a payday loans executive and his business ties to Saudi Arabia, Republicans have cast doubts on Lamont’s dealings with the State Pier Project in New London and his administration’s transparency under the Freedom of Information Act.

The State Pier Project has swelled from an initial projected total of $93 million to more than $250 million. At a debate at Mohegan Sun on Tuesday, Lamont called the project “one of the most important investments we’ve made in Southeast Connecticut.”

“There’s more housing being built in New London today than the last 20 years combined,” he added, attributing it to jobs promised by the coming wind power. “Bob wants to tear up the contract and walk away from the utilities,” he said, arguing that the deal isn’t as bad as it’s been made out to be, with Ørsted loaning $75 million for the project and New London getting an allowance with a host city agreement.

“Someone at the table needs to represent the taxpayers,” Stefanowski said during the debate. “Who’s picking up the $210 million overrun? Eversource? Nope. Ørsted? Nope. You are!” Stefanowski said he won’t scrap the project but he advocated for bringing stakeholders back to the table to renegotiate the deal.

Hotaling said the State Pier is “the right project, we need clean energy, it was just mismanaged.” He said he would have removed operations management before Lamont did.

In a moment of local significance during the campaign, in August at a news conference in New London, Stefanowski slammed Lamont for lack of transparency and cost overruns at State Pier.

Rainy day fund

Throughout the campaign, Stefanowski has noted that the state’s budget surplus is owed to federal COVID-19 relief funding, not Lamont’s leadership. Lamont has said that paying down pension debt at the current level would reduce taxes by $450 million annually for state residents. The state’s overall pension debt is around $41 billion. The governor has criticized Stefanowski and Hotaling for being too willing to spend the state’s rainy day fund. Hotaling has protested, painting himself as more cautious than Stefanowski and warning of recession, but less tight-fisted than Lamont.

Stefanowski has said he hasn’t seen any real benefit from the budget surplus, while Lamont has cited improvements in DMV wait times, access to daycare and availability of capital for small businesses.

The Republican wants to spend more than $2 billion of the rainy day fund on “giving the average family back about $2,000” and services. Republicans across the state have campaigned on the difficulty people are having paying electricity bills, gas, rent, property taxes, and the like.

Pillars of Lamont’s campaign — the burgeoning budget surplus and the approximately $650 million in tax cuts passed in this year’s budget adjustment — don’t explain how he would address the state’s economic issues, critics say.

Stefanowski has avoided advocating for a widely panned policy he pushed for in the 2018 campaign — that the state should eliminate its income tax. But at an event in New London in July, he returned to it, in the context of his June meeting with New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.

“Anyone want to guess what the income tax rate is in New Hampshire? Zero. Anybody want to guess what the state sales tax is in New Hampshire? It’s zero,” Stefanowski said. “So people say it can’t be done, New Hampshire is the perfect example of how it can be done.”

A law meant to bolster the number of the state’s affordable housing units — known by general statute 8-30g — has become the crux of the housing debate since in September Stefanowski said he wanted to repeal it because, he posited, it threatens local zoning control.

Hotaling has said 8-30g needs to be revised, as it only has 18% compliance from towns. He had choice words for Stefanowski in Tuesday’s debate, saying the Republican wants to repeal the law without anything to replace it.

“Bob says, ‘Get rid of 8-30g, details to follow,’” Lamont said. “I believe strongly in local control of housing. We desperately need more housing.” He said the law only applies to towns that “refuse to come up with a plan.”

The three candidates embody their party’s positions on gun control, with Lamont advocating for stricter measures, Stefanowski uninterested in imposing more regulations, and Hotaling somewhere in the middle. Hotaling has said he supports “common sense gun laws” but also doesn’t plan to install stricter gun control laws if elected.

Qualified immunity

While overall crime in the state has decreased, violent crime including murder and rape are up, according to the latest reports. Stefanowski has worked to paint his opponents as “soft on crime” and “anti-police.”

Lamont has said the crime statistics reflect too many illegal guns on the street, too many guns with high-capacity magazines, mental health issues and extreme behavior coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as “something as isolated as two or three gang leaders.”

Stefanowski said the limiting of qualified immunity in the police accountability law passed two years ago is to blame for the reduction in the state police force, and he would like to replace it in full. He has made the issue integral to his campaign, consistently bringing it up at public safety-related events. Lamont has said there’s no need to revise the law.

Qualified immunity partially protects police officers from being sued. It was limited by the police accountability law passed in 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The law makes it so officers can be held liable if they’ve knowingly violated a person’s rights.

“All it says is if you purposefully knew you were breaking the law, like your knee on someone’s neck for nine-plus minutes, you will be held accountable,” Lamont told The Day in October, referencing the murder of Floyd by police. “The legislature thought this important because it said to the community that nobody is above the law.”

Roe v. Wade

The abortion debate also has defined the governor’s race this year, with Lamont at one point accusing Stefanowski of “scaring the women of Connecticut” on the issue, and Stefanowski saying he is pro-choice, and Lamont’s attacks are disingenuous.

In an apparent departure from his position that he won’t change any of the state’s abortion laws, Stefanowski said during a gubernatorial forum last week that people should not get abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy. He later said he misspoke, and returned to the stance he’s taken throughout the campaign. Lamont and Hotaling adhere to the 22-week standard of Roe v. Wade.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has presented Lamont’s campaign with the chance to paint his Republican opponent as a far-right conservative, saying he has donated to anti-abortion candidates. The governor said Stefanowski’s running mate, Republican state Rep. Laura Devlin of Fairfield, supports the state’s safe harbor law, but Stefanowski “won’t comment on it.” Stefanowski told The Day he supports his running mate’s position but equivocated on whether he would have voted for it.

Lamont signed a bill into law from the most recent legislative session strengthening abortion rights and access in anticipation of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The legislation protects out-of-state women from prosecution for getting an abortion in Connecticut and Connecticut medical providers from legal actions taken against them from another state.

Qunnipiac’s latest poll with Lamont up 15 points has a 3% margin of error, Schwartz said. Does that mean Stefanowski has no chance?

“I never go that far. In an election, you just never know. But it would be a huge surprise if that happened,” Schwartz said. “It’s hard to see how he could overcome. As a pollster, we’re doing this snapshot in time: at this point, this is what people are telling us. But that’s a lot of ground to make up.”

s.spinella@theday.com