Democrats are freaking out and Republicans are doing the happy dance because Public Policy Polling has Democrat Ed Markey ahead of Republican Gabriel Gomez by only 4 points in the upcoming Massachusetts Senate election. Now, after the Martha Coakley/Scott Brown race, I'd never want to say a Republican can't win a race like this, but please read the PPP write-up to the end and note this huge caveat about poll respondents who haven't expressed a preference yet:
The pool of undecided voters ... sets up well for Markey- they voted for Obama by 18 points in November, 32% are liberals compared to only 25% who are conservatives, and 61% of them are women. Those are all demographics that ought to end up favorable to him in the end.Er, yeah, I'll say.
What I think is going on here is that the right-leaning part of the electorate is paying a lot of attention to this race because right-wingers in America always pay more attention to politics than (most of) the rest of the population -- the right has successfully turned political ranting into mass entertainment that keeps the base engaged. So it'll take old-fashioned politicking to get Markey's voters focused -- but he's a veteran campaigner, and he's got the party behind him, so I still say it's his race to lose.
And no, I'm not impressed by this:
[Gomez is] up 47/31 with independents....I don't believe the majority of those independents are genuine independents -- as I say all the time, the rightest of right-wingers love to proclaim that they hate both parties, but they inevitably vote for the most right-wing candidate in every race (or at least the most right-wing candidate they think can win). For comparison, let's look at PPP's last poll before the Scott Brown/Elizabeth Warren race, conducted November 1 and 2, 2012 (PDF): the results among independents were Brown 58%, Warren 39%. Let's look at the exit polls: Brown beat Warren among independents 58%-41%.
Warren won the race, 54%-46%.
If it's a tight race, Markey can call on various Obamas, Bidens, Clintons, and Kennedys, among others, to campaign for him. Who's going to rally the troops for Gomez? Tagg Romney?
Yeah, I'm not at all worried about this. Markey has the money and where he doesn't have the money he has the troops. Frankly, I think the more he runs like he has never run before (which I hope he does) the better it will be for the party and the state. Michelle Obama is coming in to headline for him. I hope Biden does too. The more you know about this Gabriel dude the more awful he sounds. There are plenty of independents in this state but very few hardline anti Obama people and Gabriel is aligned with some really ugly anti Obama shit. The more people see of that the more they are just going to revolt against him. Lynch tried to pull the "just plain folks crap" against Markey and got creamed. And Scott Brown's memory is still fresh--but you see him most in the bumper stickers that are scraped off. I think that's a vote most people are ashamed of--not because they are ashamed of having voted for a republican but because they hate having voted for a loser.
ReplyDeleteYeah - I'm not too worried, either.
ReplyDeleteAfter the total, train carrying liquid natural gas crashes into nuclear waste facility, wreck that was the W mis-Administration, all of a sudden, a lot of people became "Indepedents."
Hmm...
Wonder where THEY came from?
And I think the people of MA realized that, after they mistakenly voted for him because Coakley ran the worst campaign in MA history, as hard as Centerfold Scottie Brown tried to distance himself from the sociopathic crackers in his party, at heart, and when push came to shove, he was one of 'em.