NATIONAL ELECTION RETURNS : State-by-State Election Reports of Key Races and Issues : Connecticut

While Vice President George Bush was winning Connecticut’s eight electoral votes, Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., the maverick three-term Republican senator whose liberal positions often enraged his party’s more conservative wing, was on the brink of being ousted by moderate Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman, the state’s attorney general.

Weicker, whose career has been built on support from an unusual coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats, refused to concede although he was behind by 6,000 votes with 99% of the precincts counted.

Lieberman, who claimed victory, accused the incumbent in the campaign of having neglected the state to pursue his own philosophical agenda and portrayed him in cartoon TV spots as a sleeping bear who had missed important votes.