A poll released on Thursday gives Lt. Gov. Phil Scott a 45-point lead over his rival, Bruce Lisman in the Republican primary race for governor.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents supported Phil Scott over Bruce Lisman who was preferred by 23 percent. Nine percent were undecided.
In the Democratic primary race for governor, the poll found that 36 percent of respondents plan to vote for Sue Minter and 31 percent preferred Matt Dunne. Eight percent backed Peter Galbraith.
A whopping 25 percent of likely Democratic voters surveyed hadn’t yet decided whom they favor.
The 600-person survey of registered voters was conducted by the Los Angeles firm FM3, (Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz and Associates), from June 26-29, 2016.
Respondents were broken up into subsets for the Democratic and Republican primaries. The smaller sample sizes resulted in higher margin of error rates. In the Republican primary subset, there were 171 respondents and the margin of error was 7.5 percent. The sample size was 217 for the Democratic primary and the margin of error was 6.5 percent.
The poll was part of a larger survey of Vermonters attitudes about climate change that was commissioned by Energy Independent Vermont, a carbon tax advocacy group that represents a coalition of environmental organizations including the Conservation Law Foundation, VPIRG and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.
Forty-two percent of the respondents self-identified as independents; 33 percent as Democrats; and 25 percent as Republicans.
Eighteen- to 49-year-olds represented 42 percent of the sample. Fifty-six percent held a college degree.
Poll results can be found at: www.EnergyIndependentVT.org
