It'll be interesting to see how the first few polls look following the electric primary here in my beloved state of Connecticut. (I can call it "my beloved" today, since it justified my collective faith in my fellow citizens with yesterday's vote!) Just speculating here, but my feeling is that while I expect Lieberman to be ahead, I'd be mildly surprised if it were by a huge margin.
Yesterday's vote was a bit deceptive, insofar as AMONG DEMOCRATS, I think Lamont won by a hell of a lot more than 52-48. Yes, I know, it was a Democratic primary, but for those of you who are unfamiliar with Connecticut rules, registered Republicans are allowed to change their affiliation and vote Democratic 90 days before a primary. Even more importantly, unaffiliated voters (which represent the largest bloc of voters in the Nutmeg State) are allowed to register Democratic for the purposes of voting in a primary 24 hours before said primary.
The rough numbers are that 14,000 Republican voters came over in sufficient time to vote yesterday, as well as 14,000 unaffiliated voters. I'm assuming that a very, very small percentage of Republicans flipped their allegiance to support Lamont...maybe 90% Lieberman voters from that crowd? I think you could make an argument either way on the unaffiliateds, so I figure them in at a 50-50 split.
The bottom line: there were 28,000 voters that did NOT represent the core Democrats yesterday, who nevertheless voted in the Democratic primary. If you lop about 20,000 votes from Lieberman's total and 8,000 from Lamont's, you're left with Ned holding between 54-55% of the "real" Democratic vote, which is closer (I think) to the margin of victory than the four-point win he actually squeaked out.
Of course, going forward, the polls will be of all Connecticut voters, and we can realistically expect Lieberman to take a pretty substantial percentage of the Republicans. I'm hoping for a migration of Democrats that may have voted for Lieberman the first time around, but will reconsider and vote the party line in the general election. And there will be a huge number of undecideds.
Bottom line? I hope no one gets discouraged by whatever polls trickle out over the next week or two, whether they indicate a Lieberman lead in a three-way election or not. Lamont's candidacy was always going to be that of an underdog, and I'm just thrilled that the first leg of it went so well. The next three months are going to be quite the war, and I hope we're all ready for it.
