Connecticut 5: Chris Murphy fit to be tied to a poll!

The anecdotal signs for liberal Chris Murphy's re-election are not good.

A poll conducted by a firm that works with Republican politicians found that Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy and his challenger, state Sen. Sam Caligiuri, R-Waterbury, are in a statistical dead heat in their 5th District race.

The highlights

Today the Caligiuri Campaign released poll results showing that Sam Caligiuri, the Republican Nominee for Congress (CT-5), is a single point behind Chris Murphy. This amounts to a statistical tie. In a head-to-head matchup, 39% of respondents favored Caligiuri while 40% favored Murphy. This represents a huge gain for Caligiuri and a significant loss for Murphy, as Murphy was leading Caligiuri 49% to 28% in an October 2009 poll conducted by the same firm. . . . In the hard re-elect question, only 36% believe Chris Murphy has performed his job in Congress well enough to deserve re-election, while 45% think it’s time for a new person. In an ominous sign for the party in power, only 29% of voters believe the county is heading in the right direction, while 63% believe things are off on the wrong track. This number has gotten worse over the past 10 months: In October, 2009, the right direction/wrong track number was 35%-54%. The generic ballot favors Republicans, 41%-38%. Among unaffiliated voters, the generic Republican leads 38%-32%.

The campaign manager for Murphy, former lead political advisor for convicted Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, went into a tirade about the poll results. Of course, he failed to release to the media any of the alleged polls he had that supposedly put his candidate way ahead.  Lack of exculpatory evidence got his old boss convicted, hmmm...

In any event, Courant columnist Rick Green, no pushover for spin, seemed satisfied the Caligiuri poll passed the smell test.

In Murphy world the Connecticut economy is recovering nicely and everyone loves a congressman who is a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi.  And jeez, I recall when the Left called itself the "reality-based community". That's a quaint thought now--it reminds me of when there was full employment in this part of Connecticut--27,000 jobs ago.   

Sam Caligiuri has surged into a tie before airing TV ads. It's only gonna get better, my friends.