With budget settled, voters displeased with Malloy

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy may have won the latest round of Connecticut’s state budget morass, but according to a fresh public opinion poll, he sacrificed more than a fair amount of precious political and voter capital doing so.

Malloy’s job approval rating has fallen to 42 percent, and a majority of voters say they would not re-elect him in the wake of the legislative session that saw passage of the largest tax increase in state history, according to a new survey of likely Connecticut voters conducted by a third-party researcher for the Yankee Institute.

In a Yankee Institute survey conducted February 20, Malloy’s job approval rating was 50 percent favorable, 36 percent unfavorable, for a net swing of negative 28 points.

Malloy’s job approval rating trailed those of other Democrats:

• Sen. Richard Blumenthal:   61 percent approve, 36 percent disapprove (net +25)
• President Barack Obama:  55 percent approve, 42 percent disapprove (net +13)
• Sen. Joe Lieberman:  52 percent approve, 46 percent disapprove (net +6)

Malloy is less popular among Connecticut voters than New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (50 percent favorable/26 percent unfav) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (38 percent fav/32 percent unfav).

Voters oppose by wide margins every Malloy administration initiative tested in the survey:

• On the budget deal, 57 percent of voters say the new state budget agreement “spends too much and raises taxes too much,” while 39 percent describe it as “about as good as could be expected given a weak economy.”
• On the labor union concessions, 49 percent of voters say state employee unions “did not give up enough and should have been asked for more,” while 36 percent say “the unions did give up a lot.”
• By a margin of 60-30 percent, voters describe the $572 million New Britain busway project as “a bad use of taxpayer money.”
• By a margin of 56-25 percent, voters describe the $864 million UConn Health Center expansion as “a bad use of taxpayer money.”

The phone survey was conducted on June 9 of 500 likely Connecticut voters and has a margin or error of 4.5 percent. The survey was conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, which is associated with Rasmussen Reports.