Poll: Murphy leads McMahon in Connecticut Senate race

The poll, from the Hartford Courant, gives Murphy a 6-point lead, with 44 percent support to McMahon’s 38. Seventeen percent of voters are still undecided.

{mosads}McMahon’s deficit is partly due to an old problem — she’s losing substantial support among women, facing a near-identical deficit to the one she faced on Election Day in 2010 with that demographic group. She has only 32 percent support among women, to Murphy’s 50.

Murphy and the Democratic Party have attempted, in this race, like others in the nation, to target the Republican on women’s issues. Though McMahon has taken steps to shore up that deficit, releasing soft ads that feature her speaking to the camera about her family and holding women’s roundtables across the state, this new poll indicates Democratic efforts might be working.

The Courant poll comes on the heels of a Siena College poll that gave Murphy a 2-point lead over McMahon. The race has remained close from the start. Though McMahon has a substantial spending advantage on Murphy, due largely to her ability to self-fund her campaign, Connecticut’s blue lean has boosted the Democrat enough to overcome many of her sharpest attacks. But McMahon has performed better this cycle than she did in 2010, indicating the race is still too close to call.

The poll was conducted among 574 likely voters between Oct. 11-16, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.