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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

New Poll - Coakley Only Up 2 Pts

Rasmussen has released the results of its new polling, and it is a shocker:

The Massachusetts’ special U.S. Senate election has gotten tighter, but the general dynamics remain the same.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley attracting 49% of the vote while her Republican rival, state Senator Scott Brown, picks up 47%.

Three percent (3%) say they’ll vote for independent candidate Joe Kennedy, and two percent (2%) are undecided. The independent is no relation to the late Edward M. Kennedy, whose Senate seat the candidates are battling to fill in next Tuesday's election.

Coakley is supported by 77% of Democrats while Brown picks up the vote from 88% of Republicans. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Brown leads 71% to 23%. To be clear, this lead is among unaffiliated voters who are likely to participate in the special election.

These findings are consistent what I observed with my visits to the Brown headquarters and telephone operation: Independents are breaking heavily to Brown by a 3-1 margin.

I was surprised during the debate last night why Brown kept hitting on the issue of trying terrorists as enemy combatants. Looks like Brown had some good polling intelligence. This from the Rasmussen report:

Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters say the man who tried to blow up an airline on Christmas Day should be tried by the military as a terrorist act while 21% believe the case should be tried by civilian courts as a criminal act.

And Brown was super-smart to make sure he pointed out that he agrees with Obama on some issues, notably Afghanistan, while taking on the Massachusetts state establishment:

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of those likely to vote in this election still approve of the way that Barack Obama is doing his job as president. Just 40% approve of the way that Deval Patrick is handling his role as governor.

Brown's prep for the debate was awesome. He didn't change his positions based on polls, but he made sure to hammer the right issues during the debate.

With each passing day I am more and more impressed with the Brown campaign.

Update: I missed this detail in the Rasmussen report in my first read-through, Brown is ahead by one point among people who have made up their minds already, while Coakley is ahead by two points when leaners are included:

Leaners are those who don’t initially have a preference for one of the major candidates but indicate that they are leaning in that direction. Without “leaners,” Brown was actually ahead by a single percentage point....

The new Rasmussen Reports poll shows that Brown is ahead by two percentage points among those who are absolutely certain they will vote. A week ago, he trailed by two among those certain to vote.

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Related Posts:
Brown HQ Report #3
Brown HQ Report #2
Brown HQ Report #1

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3 comments:

  1. My analogy to the closeness of this race is that of a photograph of a Ferrari overtaking a Yugo. Yeah, the Ferrari may be behind or ahead by a foot or two when the photo was taken but the Ferrari was doing 185 and the Yugo was broken and the owner was waiting for parts.

    The abject panic seen at the last minute on the part of the complacent Coakley campaign shows that not only were they caught flat footed but their response can only be within the capabilities of Coakley herself.

    Unfortunately for the Democrats, they could have found a hundred more capable legislators (as opposed to someone like Martha who has never been a legislator) on Beacon Hill that would have done a better job as a Senatorial candidate - my Senator, Senate President Therese Murray, someone who I do not agree with but like personally, would have done a better job. I think that with Terry as the nominee we would not be having this conversation right now.

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  2. With regards to the terrorist issue, remember, most of the September 11th flights originated in Boston. That was a shocking thing, and they lost folks on the flights, too.

    Also, while I'm sure there are some hoity-toity Liberals in Mass, the majority of them in my opinion are not what your average Conservative thinks of as Liberals...these ain't San Francisco, radical, hate-America types. Most of them are workin'-class, decent, hard-working folks, who just happen to have been brought up to hate Republicans on principle.

    Honestly, they remind me of the way Southeners used to be. I equated Republicans with the devil as a small child.....that all changed as the party got more liberal, and most of my relatives voted for Reagan, and have voted R ever since...interestingly enough, not one of them has ever changed their registration to R, though.

    Anyway, these folks in Mass don't want terrorists to be mollycoddled, and they do not want to be taxed any more, either.

    Brown has a chance to win more than this race...I think he can start showing that Republicans are a viable choice, even in Mass.
    I mean, they DO vote a Republican in as Gov now and then; they are not a completely lost cause.

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  3. MissTammy: Being from the Bay State I can tell you that you are right on the mark. Many of us grew up in houses that had a crucifix hanging on the bedroom wall and a picture of JFK somewhere in the house. Our fathers were almost always in some type of union and blue collar workers always voted Democrat. The "Democrats" in office now are an abomination to the ones when we were kids... we call them "Republicans" now. If this election isn't stolen by massive voter fraud in the big cities and suburbs, Brown will win it.

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