If not panic, last Wednesday's Quinnipiac poll numbers had to generate serious concern in the Malloy campaign. The Malloy folks are convinced that the Republican challenger, Tom Foley, has so far run a terrible campaign in this gubernatorial rematch, an opinion shared by many political observers, including yours truly.

However, there was Foley leading 46 percent to 40 percent in the survey of likely voters.

How to explain it? A careful look at the poll shows it was far more an anti-Malloy than a pro-Foley vote. Among those who said they plan to vote for Foley, 62 percent characterized their vote as mainly "against Malloy," as opposed to "for Foley." Among pro-Foley women voters, the "against Malloy" number was 70 percent.

The poll also showed 53 percent of those responding have an unfavorable opinion of Malloy, only 40 percent a favorable opinion. That is about as dire as it gets for an incumbent up for re-election.

Dannel P. Malloy - "Dan" when he is campaigning as a man of the people - still suffers from signing into law the biggest tax increase in state history, about $1.5 billion, to address the massive deficit he inherited. Many voters feel Malloy did not extract enough concessions from state workers, an opinion I share.

While the economy is improving - the unemployment rate is 6.6 percent, down from 9.3 percent when Malloy took office in 2011 - many families are still hurting, struggling to pay their bills in a state with one of the highest costs of living in the nation.

Many resent the millions in tax dollars the Malloy administration has given bioscience, digital entertainment and financial service corporations to attract or keep them in Connecticut. In the long term, such a strategy may well drive job growth, but Malloy faces re-election in the short term, and many don't consider that money well or fairly spent.

The poor approval numbers also suggest the Malloy attack ads - linking Foley to the decline of the Bibb company he ran in Georgia back in the 1990s - may only be serving to reinforce negative feelings about Malloy.

Among the most surprising numbers in the poll was the 7 percent showing of independent candidate Joe Visconti. The assumption has been that Visconti, a strong Second Amendment advocate and stark fiscal conservative, would draw votes from Foley. Instead, he drew support equally from the Republican and Democrat. Remove him from the race and Foley still leads by 6 points, 49-43.

What appears to be happening is much of Visconti's support comes from people who have no idea what he stands for, but don't like Foley or Malloy. Seventy-five percent of those who back Visconti said they might change their mind, compared to 31 percent of Malloy supporters and 21 percent of Foley backers.

It will be interesting to see how Foley reacts to the poll. It might persuade him he is following the right strategy of avoiding too many specifics. If that's the case, he will continue to rely on the broad themes of being a pro-business candidate who wants to lower taxes, cut regulations, end corporate welfare and complain about the gun law (without saying how to change it).

My take is that playing it safe could be a blunder for Foley. He is better off going in for the kill by offering some innovative and bold policy proposals to generate excitement for his candidacy.

These polls have a tendency to underestimate minority voters, who will break solidly for Malloy. Democrats, with their registration dominance, particularly in the cities, have a far more formidable ground game to get voters to the polls, including some seemingly unlikely voters not counted in the survey. And, when the votes really count, Visconti is much more likely to hurt Foley than Malloy.

Anyone who watches football knows that when a team is in the lead and begins playing conservatively so as not to lose, they often do just that - lose. Foley risks doing the same if he wages a campaign without substance.

Paul Choiniere is the Editorial Page Editor.