Poll: Murphy leads McMahon in Connecticut Senate race

Democrat Chris Murphy is slightly ahead of Republican challenger Linda McMahon, a shift from the last independent poll of the race, but almost 30 percent of Connecticut voters remain undecided in the state's Senate race.

The University of Connecticut/Hartford Courant poll gives Murphy 37 percent support over McMahon's 33 percent, though that's a statistically insignificant lead, considering the margin of error is 4.4 percentage points.

And it reveals that both candidates have room to grow — and that they'll be fighting for the same subset of Connecticut voters. A full 48 percent of unaffiliated voters still have not decided their vote, so both McMahon and Murphy will have to toe a moderate line to win them over.

Murphy leads among both men and women, but McMahon lags among women by only three percentage points -- a stark difference from her 20-point deficit with female voters on Election Day in 2010. That seems to indicate her early efforts to shore up support among that demographic -- including women-centric business roundtables and meet-and-greets -- may be paying off.

The poll indicates, too, that Murphy could have more work to do shoring up the Democratic base than McMahon has to do with Republicans: while only 17 percent of Republicans are undecided, 27 percent of Democrats haven't picked a candidate yet.

The poll was conducted among 517 voters from Sept. 11-16.

--This piece was corrected to reflect the fact that Rep. Chris Murphy leads among both men and women.

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