The Good:
With AG Blumenthal in, this seat is definitely safer for Democrats. Public Policy Polling had a poll in the field this week and the results are quite good for Blumenthal:
When Chris Dodd retired last night his seat went from one of the most vulnerable to one of the safest for Senate Democrats. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal leads all three of the Republicans in the race by at least 30 points in polling we conducted Monday and Tuesday night before Dodd’s announcement.
Blumenthal is unusually popular, especially in hyper partisan times when voters like few politicians. 59% have a favorable opinion of him to just 19% who see him negatively. It’s no surprise that he’s liked by 71% of Democrats and 60% of independents, but even Republicans view him favorably by a 37/35 margin. It doesn’t take a lot of hands to count the number of Democratic politicians with positive numbers among GOP voters these days.
Blumenthal leads Rob Simmons 59-28, Linda McMahon 60-28, and Peter Schiff 63-23. It would take an epic collapse for him not to be Connecticut’s next Senator.
Blumenthal also has polls for favorability 59/19 and includes a plurality of Republicans in the state.
Congressman Chris Murphy (CT-5) also was polling ahead of all repub candidates by 7 – 16 points, which seems to mean that Dodd was the issue, not anti-Dem sentiments especially.
The Bad:
1. Senator Tim Johnson (SD) becomes chair of the Banking Committee. Senator Johnson really loves banks.
2. Blumenthal was widely expected to be the Lieberman-killer in 2012. Now who’s up?