Lieberman opens wide lead on Lamont in Conn. race

Reuters
Lieberman opens wide lead on Lamont in Conn. race

BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, running as an independent, has taken a wide 17-point lead over Democrat Ned Lamont in the Senate race in Connecticut, according to a poll released on Friday.

Lieberman, a three-term incumbent and the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee who lost to Lamont in the party primary, held a 52 percent to 35 percent lead in the three-way race, said the poll, the first since a televised debate this week.

Republican Alan Schlesinger trailed with 6 percent, according to the Quinnipiac University poll of 881 likely voters. The survey's margin of error was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

Lamont, a millionaire businessman who beat Lieberman in the primary by attacking the longtime Democrat's support for the Iraq war, had trailed by 10 points in a September 28 poll despite digging deep into his own pockets to help fund the campaign.

Quinnipiac said only 3 percent of those who watched Monday's debate or read or heard about it said it had had changed their mind about who they would support.

"Ned Lamont needed to score a knockout in the debates to catch Sen. Joseph Lieberman, but he apparently didn't lay a glove on him," Quinnipiac poll director Douglas Schwartz said in the survey.

Schwartz said Lieberman leads Lamont 70 percent to 9 percent among likely Republican voters and 58 percent to 36 percent among likely independent voters, while Democratic voters back Lamont 55 percent to 36 percent.

The poll was conducted Tuesday through Thursday.

The race has drawn national attention for its emphasis on Iraq and Democratic anger at Bush. Lamont cast the race as a referendum on the war and urged voters to send a message to Bush and the Democratic establishment that was slow to embrace calls for a quick pullout of troops.

Lieberman has fought back, calling himself a reliable opponent of Bush's domestic agenda.