Jason The Greek: Watch W. Hartford & The 3 Ms

Just how close will it be? How long into Tuesday night before one candidate can claim victory? One of Connecticut’s most incisive in-the-trenches numbers-crunchers handicaps the Ned Lamont-Dan Malloy Democratic gubernatorial primary, offering up the ten factors to watch:

1. Turnout

Much more so than in general elections, undecided voters in two-candidate primary races are prone to take the third choice of simply not voting. While turnout is pretty static for presidential elections, midterm elections and the like, primary turnout fluctuates widely. This cautions against trying to gauge the race based on how the undecideds break, since they might not come to the polls at all. While last week’s Q Poll did not include a registered voters sample, the previous Q Poll had an 11-point pro-Lamont difference between how registered and likely voters behaved. This difference means that the fewer votes cast the more likely it will redound to Malloy’s benefit. Bottom line: If vote totals exceed 220,000, then Lamont should be fine. Anything under 200,000 and Malloy starts to look better. In between and the race looks like a tie.

2. Stamford

If Stamford’s former Mayor Dan Malloy is going to be governor, his home town will be absolutely crucial. In 2006, Stamford cast a little over 10,000 votes and gave Malloy about a 5,000 margin over John DeStefano. This margin might have been boosted by the strong regional advantage Malloy had over his New Haven rival. Still Malloy is going to need to leave Stamford with at least a 4,000 vote margin to have any real confidence of victory.

3. The Big Three Cities

To balance out Malloy’s Stamford margin, Lamont will need to win by a significant number of votes in the major cities (New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport), where he has the support of the big three mayors. Of particular importance is New Haven, which contains far and away the most primary votes of any city in the state, beating second place Stamford by more than 4,200. In 2006, Hartford and Bridgeport also supplied more than 8,000 votes each. Together these three major cities accounted for roughly 12 percent of the ​‘06 gubernatorial votes. If Lamont can erase the Stamford margin here, he should be clearly able to win. If, however, Malloy can muster an overall tie or near it in these three cities, he will be in a fantastic position to win.

4. Lieberman Country 

Once the cities are accounted for it becomes more difficult for either candidate to get separation. For Malloy and Lamont the next real battlegrounds are the towns in which Joe Lieberman was able to defeat Lamont in the 2006 Senate primary. Outside of Bridgeport and Stamford, Lieberman was able to win a number of towns, which produced a cumulative 9,000 vote margin. Of particular importance were Waterbury [1,400 margin], West Haven [1,300], East Haven [600] and a few other towns at around 400. While turnout will likely be down considerably, anything less than a 5,000 vote margin for Malloy from these towns, and he likely won’t be able to counterbalance areas where Lamont has stronger support.

5. Fairfield County

The battle for Fairfield County, especially the towns with many New York commuters, will be particularly important. This was an area where Malloy showed extremely well against DeStefano and Lamont scored particularly well against Lieberman. This is also the area in which Malloy should have the strongest name recognition and from which Lamont hails. If Malloy was in fact a good mayor, like Pennsylvania Gov. and former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell before him, he should get credit in the surrounding suburbs. This is an area in which each candidate needs to stay close to the other. Although these towns are not decisive for their vote total, if one candidate were to win, say, New Canaan decisively, that candidate would be far more likely to win the race.

6. West Hartford and Other Shared Territory

Once we have counted the four big cities, Lieberman Country, and Fairfield County, Malloy should be up by at least his Stamford margin plus 2,000. If he is not, or if he is behind, the night will be short and boring. If Malloy is up by this margin, towns outside Fairfield County that both Ned and Dan won in ​‘06 (so-called shared territory) should play a decisive role.

If Malloy comes in with a lead and can keep shared territory to a tie or at worst a loss of 1,000 votes, there probably aren’t enough votes anywhere else to reverse a Malloy tide. In particular, West Hartford, with the third most primary votes overall, may turn out to be the swing town among the swing towns. Winning or losing here may signal the overall result.

7. The Three M’s

Manchester, Middletown and Meriden will also be crucial areas to monitor. They are big enough towns to be potentially decisive, and a Malloy win in any of them could hobble Lamont’s ability to win statewide. Lamont won all three in 2006 while Malloy was losing all three. So a Malloy win here might signal that he is on the path to victory.

8. The Wyman Factor

It’s also worth watching whether Dan Malloy’s choice of Nancy Wyman as his running mate will help him in the areas around her base, such as Tolland, Windham and Mansfield. Dan Malloy ran incredibly strong in Simsbury last time when First Selectman May Glassman was his running mate. (This year she’s Ned Lamont’s running mate.)

9. The Glassman Factor

Similarly, don’t forget to watch the Glassman effect for Ned Lamont in Simsbury and surrounding towns. Malloy will need to keep these margins down to prevail in a close race.

10. A Surprise Pocket of Strength

Will one candidate be able to generate a base of strength outside of Malloy’s Stamford? If a candidate can muster more than 60 percent of the vote in a surprising area, that candidate may pull out a victory in a squeaker.

Polls now still have Lamont as the slight favorite, but if any of the factors identified above tips Malloy’s way, hold on to your hats: Aug.10 will turn out to be a long evening.

Jason Paul (pictured at the top of the story) served as campaign director for Jonathan Harris‘s campaign for secretary of the state until he dropped out of the race after the convention. Paul was campaign manager for the Democratic candidates for West Hartford Town Council in 2009, all six of whom won. He started in politics volunteering for the Bill Curry gubernatorial campaign in 2002, interned twice for Diane Farrell when she ran for U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 4th District, and volunteered for Barack Obama in both the primary and general elections. As a student at Brandeis University, he organized the campus for Obama, including recruiting 50 students to work in New Hampshire on Election Day.