Connecticut voters may like U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, but a new poll shows they aren’t thrilled about him running for president and a majority surveyed say they want him to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination.
A new Quinnipiac University Poll shows 55 percent of those surveyed believe the state’s senior senator is spending too much time on the campaign trail and not enough time serving as senator.
Seventy percent of voters surveyed say Dodd should drop out of the presidential race. Among Democrats, 68 percent want him to call it quits, while 26 percent say he should stay in the race.
Although he trails the favorites by a wide margin in many national polls, Dodd has shown no signs of dropping out. In fact, he recently rented a home in Iowa for his family in order to campaign for that state’s upcoming caucuses.
“While Sen. Dodd’s overall approval rating (in Connecticut) is down five points, it is still a healthy 55 percent. But there is a strong feeling that he is spending too much time on the campaign trail and that he should get out of the presidential race,” Poll Director Douglas Schwartz said.
Colleen Flanagan, the national press spokewoman for the Dodd presidential campaign said Thursday that the people of Connecticut are being asked to look at Dodd in a different way than they have over the past years.
“We’re confident that when the voters in Connecticut, and elsewhere around the country, focus on the race and choose the candidate that has a track record of proven results and bold leadership on the issues that matter to them most, they will choose Chris Dodd,” Flanagan said.
The poll indicates that Connecticut voters approve of the job Dodd is doing as senator by a 55 to 31 percent margin. But when asked if they think he would make a good president, 26 percent said he would, while 57 percent said he would not.
Two candidates from neighboring New York appear to be the favorites in Connecticut. U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani are locked in a tight race, with Clinton garnering 45 percent and Giuliani winning 44 percent in a hypothetical matchup in the Quinnipiac poll.
The survey of 1,029 registered voters was conducted Nov. 1-5. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. The poll includes 291 Republicans with a margin of error of 5.7 percentage points, and 385 Democrats with a margin of error of 5 percentage points.