UPDATED: New London Favors The Favorites In Primaries

New London has helped contribute to statewide winners in today’s Democratic and Republican primaries, as the city favored Chris Murphy in the Democratic race and Paul Formica and Linda McMahon in the Republican race. Each candidate has also won statewide, according to multiple news agencies.

In each contest, New London voters favored one candidate over the other by at least a two-to-one margin. In the Republican race, East Lyme First Selectman Formica earned 216 votes in his bid for the Republican nomination for the 2nd Congressional District race. His rival, Daria Novak of Madison, had 47 votes.

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The Associated Press has declared Formica the overall winner in this race. He will go on to challenge Rep. Joe Courtney, who has held a seat in the House of Representatives since winning the 2010 election.

The AP has also named McMahon the statewide winner for the Republican nomination for Senate while Murphy has captured the Democratic nomination in this race. McMahon defeats challenger Chris Shays, while Murphy beat out Susan Bysiewicz for the party nod. McMahon and Murphy will face off to replace Senator Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat and current Independent who is retiring after spending 24 years in the Senate.

In New London, McMahon had 185 votes while Shays had 97. The city’s Democratic voters gave 489 votes to Murphy and 238 votes to Bysiewicz.

The totals represent a low voter turnout overall in New London: 11.9 percent in the Democratic primary and 22.5 percent in the Republican primary. There are a total of 6,100 registered Democrats in the city and 1,255 registered Republicans.

Statewide outcomes

With 77% of the precincts reporting at 10 p.m., McMahon had a sound buffer against former U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays with 76% of the vote. Meanwhile, Murphy cruised by Bysiewicz, the Middletown native and former Secretary of the State, by a comfortable 66% to 34% margin.

In the Second Congressional District, East Lyme restaurateur Paul Formica was running away with the Republican primary over Madison’s Daria Novak by about a 2-to-1 ratio, as of 9 p.m., and was declared the winner.

In the Fifth Congressional District, Elizabeth Esty emerged on the Democratic side with a convincing 43% to 34% margin (as of 10 p.m.) over the embattled Chris Donovan, once considered the strong frontrunner before a campaign-finance scandal involving several members of his staff, and dark-horse Dan Roberti (23%).

Republicans in the Fifth District went down to the wire, with favorite Andrew Roraback pulling it out with 34% of the vote, followed by Mark Greenberg (28%), Lisa Wilson-Foley (19%) and Justin Bernier (19%) as of 10 p.m.

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