The American Spectator

When Rasmussen released a poll six days ago that found Republican Linda McMahon leading Democrat Chris Murphy by three, many wondered if it was an outlier. Connecticut is a deep-blue state and McMahon lost by twelve points last time.

One poll’s an outlier, two could be a trend:

Republican Linda McMahon holds a slender lead over Democrat Chris Murphy in a new Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters released early Tuesday.

Forty-nine percent of those surveyed favor McMahon; 46 back Murphy. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. Just 4 percent of voters are undecided, the survey found. 

Murphy had the lead in every poll taken before last week. Two margin-of-error leads for McMahon certainly don’t represent a seismic shift.

But it’s worth asking if something bigger is happening in Connecticut. President Obama has probably lost more ground in the Nutmeg State than anywhere else. The state unemployment rate has been rising for most of the year and is now higher than the national rate. And Connecticut, brimming with wealth in Fairfield County, has a slightly more fiscally conservative flavor than neighboring Massachusetts or Rhode Island.

Connecticut’s governor, senators, and representatives are all Democrats except for Joe Lieberman. It may be that after decades of tax-and-spend liberalism, the Land of Steady Habits is ready to try something different.