Jonathan Pelto reports the results of the latest Quinnipiac poll of Connecticut voters. Governor Dannell Malloy’s approval rating has dropped to only 32%. Malloy is known to readers of this blog as a chum of the charter industry and the Connecticut hedge fund managers who love them. Not even the embarrassing implosion of the Jumoke charter chain dimmed his ardor for deregulated, privately managed schools.

From the Quinnipiac University Public Opinion Poll;
Connecticut voters disapprove 58 – 32 percent of the job Gov. Dannel Malloy is doing, his lowest approval rating ever and the lowest score for any governor in the nine states surveyed this year by the independent Quinnipiac University Poll. The governor gets 4-1 negative scores for the way he his handling taxes and the state budget.

“Gov. Dannel Malloy’s job approval rating has plummeted to 32 percent, close to the historic 24 percent low hit by disgraced former Gov. John Rowland in January 2004, and Gov. Malloy is not in the middle of a corruption scandal,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, PhD.

“Only 36 percent of voters are satisfied with the way things are going in the state, one of the lowest scores since Quinnipiac University started asking this question in 1997.”

Connecticut is a state with many affluent, well-educated voters. They may remember that Governor Malloy campaigned last year with a promise not to raise taxes or to cut the budget of vital services. 

Pelto writes:

“But after being sworn back into office this past January, Malloy raised taxes, cut vital services and has turned his back on Connecticut’s state employees.

“Even after increasing taxes in the first year of his first term and the first year of his second term, when this present state budget cycle is over on June 30, 2017, Connecticut will be facing a two-year General Fund Budget Deficit of $1.6 Billion … YES, A DEFICIT OF $1.6 BILLION … [A deficit of $927 million in FY 2018 and $831 million in FY 2019.]”