Rasmussen Poll: Lieberman beats Lamont in three-way race

Rasmussen Reports published their poll today which has Joe Lieberman beating Ned Lamont in a three-way race (with Lieberman running as an independent).

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman (D) has angered the left wing of his own party with his position on the war in Iraq. However, Connecticut voters are evenly divided on the question--39% agree with Lieberman's position on Iraq while 40% disagree.

Other survey data suggests that this issue is not a serious obstacle to Lieberman's plans for another six-year term in the U.S. Senate. That's true even if Lieberman were to run as an Independent candidate.

If Lieberman runs as a Democrat and is challenged by former Governor Lowell Weicker running as an independent, Lieberman leads by 21 percentage points--46% to 25%. That's essentially unchanged from our January election poll in Connecticut.

Businessman Ned Lamont is considering a challenge to Lieberman for the Democratic Party nomination. However, if Lamont were to run as a Democrat and Lieberman as an Independent, the incumbent Senator still shows a 20-point advantage and leads Lamont 45% to 24%.

In this match-up, with Lieberman running as an Independent, he leads Lamont by 11 percentage points among voting Democrats. He also wins a solid plurality of Republican and unaffiliated voters against both Lamont and a generic Republican candidate.

At this point, I don't know how much one can read into polls considering a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this week showed that 93 percent of the public don't know enough about Ned Lamont to form an opinion.


If you take anything from these polls, it's that Ned Lamont has his work cut out for him. In order to have a chance at beating Lieberman (considering Lieberman loses the Democratic primary), Lamont will have to campaign extermely hard and make his case to those Connecticut voters who don't really know much about him yet.

Things are not impossible for Lamont but time is not on his side.

UPDATE: Genghis take a closer look at the numbers and offers his take on the poll.

What's also really worth noting that:

In this match-up, with Lieberman running as an Independent, he leads Lamont by 11 percentage points among voting Democrats. He also wins a solid plurality of Republican and unaffiliated voters against both Lamont and a generic Republican candidate. (Rasmussen)

So instead of, say, a 45% lead, as suggested by Quinnipiac... is that lead really more like 11%? "Voting Democrats" is a much better sample for the primary than all Democrats. And considering who votes in primaries... that lead could actually be down around 5%. Wow.

Again, based on the two polls, things are not impossible for Lamont.