A new poll indicates Connecticut Republican George Logan is giving Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) another race for her career as she battles to keep her House seat.
Emerson College Polling/WTNH/WCTX/The Hill released a poll Tuesday showing Logan trailing the incumbent Democrat by only 3 percentage points, with 5% of voters saying they remained undecided.
With Logan fighting to clinch Connecticut’s purple 5th Congressional District seat after losing the congressional race to Hayes by roughly 2,000 votes in 2022, the two are in a hardball rematch this election cycle.
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Logan responded to the polling Tuesday by saying that it “shows this race is going to come down to the wire yet again.”
“We’re going to continue our work to knock on doors and meet with voters to talk about commonsense solutions to grow the economy, secure our border, and make our community and world safer,” the congressional hopeful wrote on X. “I am looking forward to the weeks ahead and finishing strong.”
The poll is the first released since Hayes and Logan faced off for their first and only debate on Oct. 8.
Logan accused Hayes of making a bigoted slur against him during the event, saying her comment about “send[ing] Mr. Logan back to wherever he came from” amounted to “disgusting, racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric.” Logan’s parents immigrated to the United States from Guatemala.
Hayes has argued she meant sending Logan back “to the district where he lives and his home of Ansonia” while admitting ”this was a poor choice of words from me.”
“I should have just said go back to Ansonia and run in your own district,” she said in a Facebook apology.
Another matter of contention during the debate came when Hayes sharply criticized Logan for avoiding directly referring to former President Donald Trump by name. With Trump losing the purple district by more than 10 points during the 2020 presidential election, the GOP congressional hopeful has distanced himself from the former president throughout his campaign.
However, the poll released Tuesday showed Trump has made significant inroads in the district since 2020. Vice President Kamala Harris is only leading Trump by 1 point this time around.
Matt Taglia, who is the senior director at Emerson College Polling, called the news “a little bit of a surprise,” in comments to News 8.
“We are seeing a trend across the country, though, in states that went for President Biden, the states that we consider blue, so to speak, we do see a narrowing in some of these congressional districts where you might not otherwise expect that,” he added.
The news comes as the GOP looks to solidify its majority in the House. Republicans presently hold a 220-to-212 advantage over Democrats in the lower chamber as both parties vie to expand their congressional footprint.
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In Connecticut, Logan has tried to turn his fluent Spanish-language skills into an edge with the 5th District’s Hispanic population.
During his debate against Hayes, the Republican candidate directly addressed the Latino voting bloc, which comprises 21% of his district’s population, in Spanish. Videos posted to his X account also show him engaging with Hispanic voters in Spanish.