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Public Policy Polling rated the Massachusetts Senate race a tossup yesterday after releasing a poll showing Republican state Senator Scott Brown leading state Attorney General Martha Coakley 48-47.
Special elections are notoriously hard to decipher, and PPP got the NY-23 race wrong by over 20 points from their final pre-election poll. Like this one, that showed a heavy Republican turnout on Election Day and a disinterested Democratic electorate, buoyed by a candidate who caught fire among the far right. And this race is looking just as difficult to poll. Today’s Boston Globe poll, which is a bit older but not ancient, has Coakley up by 15 points, by 17 when you add leaners.
How to explain for the discrepancy? Really the formulation of a “likely voter” is the key. And PPP sees the likely voter as a Republican or GOP-leaning independent to a far greater degree than the Globe poll. From the analysis by PPP’s Tom Jensen:
Republicans are considerably more enthusiastic about turning out to vote than Democrats are. 66% of GOP voters say they are ‘very excited’ about casting their votes, while only 48% of Democrats express that sentiment- and that’s among the Democrats who are planning to vote in contrast to the many who are apparently not planning to do so at this point.
Brown has eye popping numbers with independents, sporting a 70/16 favorability rating with them and holding a 63-31 lead in the horse race with Coakley. Health care may be hurting Democratic fortunes with that group, as only 27% of independents express support for Obama’s plan with 59% opposed.
Even in the Globe poll, among voters “extremely interested” in the race, Coakley and Brown are tied, 47-47.
Despite today’s better numbers, national Democrats are starting to view this race as a wake-up call. The DSCC sent out a red alert to their list, and Organizing For America did as well, with a link to a virtual phone bank for Martha Coakley.
If Brown were to defeat Coakley, there would be 59 Senators left caucusing with Democrats. With Republicans virtually unanimous in opposition to the President and the Congressional Democratic agenda, that would bring the legislative process to a near-standstill, and would practically eliminate the possibility for passage of any health care legislation. Even if the House of Representatives could be cajoled into passing the Senate bill without changes, after seeing Democrats lose a Senate race in MASSACHUSETTS, surely some skittish members of the Democratic caucus would peel off the bill.
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Why even bother with an election? The damn polls are telling us how to think and what to believe, so why bother to hold an election? Don’t polls tell us who will win?
I totally hate polls. Politicians depend on them for everything, prez depend on them to decide whether to wear boxers or briefs.
all the coverage cheering on the gooper victory is a good thing; and a wake up call for MA dems and independents.
MA needs a Republican. Must maintain balance and corporate control. No hope, no dreams, only BOTS; as in the plan.
All ping, no pong, with even ping in doubt?
Heckuva job, Rahm.
solidly democratic MA isn’t going to send a republican to the senate .. i don’t care what the damn polls say ..
Last week, Chris Bowers had an odd post at Open Left where he said that people who really want to kill the healthcare bill should work to defeat Oakley, or they risk being seen as “false opponents” of the bill.
The funny thing is that proponents of killing the filibuster, like Bowers, should see the Brown/Oakley matchup the same way. If you really want to add pressure on the Senate to defeat the filibuster, shouldn’t you work for a Brown win as well? If you want the filibuster killed, then having a Rep in that seat should add necessary urgency to your case. Otherwise, aren’t you just a “false opponent” of the filibuster, and you should STFU, just as you told all the “Hamsherites” to do on HCR?
Anyway, I just wanted to point out the disconnect.
The rule change is, iirc, filibusterable so you need 60 to get the filibuster good and buried. But I could be mistaken. I think they’d better get rid of it first thing, before the MA Senate election, or be called weasels by the colleagues across the aisle (something they despise!) when they hold up seating Brown (should he win) in order to kill the filibuster and pass #hcr.
An important distinction to keep in mind is that Paul Kirk, a Democrat, is in the seat now, so it’s not exactly analogous to the Franken delay, when there was a vacancy. Democrats have 60 votes now. Should Oakley lose, they may propose waiting to seat Brown until their business is done.
Much howling, I’m sure, but they can avoid that by moving ahead in the next ten days. If they want to.
This isn’t quite true. You’d need 67 votes for a rule change mid-session. You could use the so-called “nuclear option” and change the filibuster rules with 50 votes. Or you can wait until the new rules next session and pass an organizing resolution with 50 votes. Except that organizing resolution can be filibustered, so you’d need 60.
So there are a variety of possibilities.
That is probably the same thing Rahm Emanuel is saying right now.
Were we serious about killing this session’s health insurance reform because the Democratic Party punked the tax payer?
Are there any specific goals for which we ally ourselves with Republicans to increase the public’s leverage on Congress?
The time to use the nuclear option on HCR has long since passed. Using the nuclear option to pass this piece of junk called HCR would be severely harmful. This bill is going to be bad enough if it passes with 60 votes, but if this bad bill is passed in a hyper-partisan manner it will hurt the Democrats more than they’re hurting already from this crap bill. Yes, Republican did engage in hyper-partisan passage of bad bills…and look where it got them. If this was a good bill that did real reform that actually benefited most folks it would hurt the Republicans with their obstruction, but instead their obstruction will be seen as a good thing.