*sigh*
US Senator Scott Brown has regained a lead over Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren in a new WBUR-Mass Inc. poll, after a string of polls showed Warren with the lead…. The telephone poll of 502 likely voters, taken Oct. 5 through Oct. 7, showed Brown leading 47 percent to 43 percent, within the 4.4 percent margin of error. The lead drops to 3 percentage points — 48 percent to 45 percent — with the inclusion of respondents who say they have not fully made up their mind but are leaning to one candidate….
[T]his was the first poll taken after the Oct. 3 presidential debate between President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. That debate has helped boost Romney’s campaign, which may be affecting races lower on the ballot.
Obama lead Romney by 16 points on the newest WBUR poll. It’s a sizeable advantage, but down from the 28 point lead he held in the previous WBUR poll.
This poll is apparently also the first one taken entirely after the second Warren/Brown debate, but I think it’s quite unlikely that that debate had much impact. The last WNEU poll was taken about half before and half after that debate, and it showed Warren up 5, plus, nothing happened in that debate to undermine Warren’s position.
So that leaves the presidential debate. It would surprise me to learn that Obama’s awful performance had that big of an effect on the Senate race, but it can’t be ruled out as a possibility, and the MassINC polls have generally been in line with others so far this cycle. It’s unusual for a single debate to have the impact that last week’s is apparently having, but it’s also unusual – in fact, it’s unprecedented – for a sitting president to lose the cycle’s first debate in such a convincing fashion (Gallup reports that of “all of the various debate-reaction polls Gallup has conducted, Romney’s 52-point win is the largest Gallup has measured”). Nate Silver at 538 offers some much-needed perspective on how to look at the recent polling in light of last week. (Short version: take the movement seriously, but don’t panic – among other things, Romney’s “debate bump” appears to be subsiding in the national tracking polls.)
Obama had better get his act together for the next one. In any event, there remains much to do here, as Kate explains.
Discuss
14 Comments . Leave a comment below.As a beleaguered conservative residing an hyper-pro-Obama Massachusetts, my enthusiasm for Romney isn’t too much connected to my enthusiasm for Brown. If anything, it’s the other way around.
Why?
Brown has a chance of winning. Romney does not (in MA.) Given this calculus, I’ll wait in line in the rain to vote for Scott. For Mitt, not so much. But as long as I’m there, might as well vote for Mitt, too.
in that he is pretending to be moderate and bipartisan when he isn’t, and that he’ll do or say pretty much anything to get elected. If Romney seems more palatable, it makes sense that Brown would seem more palatable as well. I don’t expect the Romney bounce will last, and hopefully this Brown bounce won’t either. It would be extremely depressing for Massachusetts voters to reward a candidate running a campaign based on racial attacks and lies. … But if it works, we can expect to see lots more of them.
This result is an outlier until further notice. It is troubling because it is from a more reputable source, but at the same time nothing seems to account for it. Perhaps, much of the latest Brown negative advertising began in the middle of the survey and Warren’s (effective) response began after it closed.
a 95% confidence level does mean that 1 out of every properly conducted poll will likely be flat out wrong, which is why a consensus of polls gives better data than a single poll. Hence the popularity of Nate Silver’s analysis.
So yes, as I just posted below, we do need to see more data before concluding this race has shifted again. But I still think here in Mass., Romney looking better can help Brown — especially among independents who once voted for Romney for governor thinking he was the moderate he pretended to be. Voters like bostonshepherd aren’t going to be responsible for shifts in voter sentiment any more than voters like me are — we’re not changing our minds on who we’re supporting this cycle
poll will be wrong at a 95% confidence level
I want to see another poll or two before I panic. Warren has broken 50% in several polls, usually with Brown trailing by 5 points or more, so one poll is an outlier until poll #2 or #3 comes along.
Also, Biden.
I’d like to see a consensus of polls taken after the debate before determining there’s been another shift of voter sentiment.
My recollection is that incumbent presidents usually get beaten up pretty good in the first debate. Kerry certainly beat up W; I don’t remember Dole-Clinton. I do remember Reagan having such a senior moment that people wondered if he was already senile. Each time the incumbent recovered for Round 2.
So, easy on the panic button. It was never going to be a landslide.
The poll was conducted on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of Columbus Day weekend. Is it possible that this poll is an outlier because the sample was skewed? I’m imagining a Warren-supporting Concord Dem closing up the summer house in VT while a Brown-supporting Shrewsbury Dem stayed at home to answer the phone. I’m trying not to be a poll truther, but I have to wonder whether this poll simply got a very different sample of the electorate that other recent polls.
…BUT!
Business at the restaurants I work at was erratic. None are in Mass (I live near the border), but the business level did not match either a typical weekend or typical holiday weekend. So there could be some holiday noise here. I will say, however, that I am not a poll truthing. My official position is that this is an outlier until other polls prove otherwise.
We’ll have to see what other polls suggest.
Or, better yet, just get out there and knock on doors.
Elizabeth Warren needs to finish out the next few weeks talking about the economic hardships Americans are facing and what she can do to turn things around. When connecting herself with President Obama, she needs to speak of how he helped with the Consumer Protection Act. She needs to describe in detail what the Consumer Protection Act is, because many people have no clue.
I’m pretty sure John Kerry and George W. Bush would disagree.
All that said, I absolutely, positively believe this Senate election is going to be heavily linked to POTUS. The margin of Obama’s victory may very well be the biggest determining factor for Warren; if we can run up the numbers for Obama, she’ll win. If we don’t, she may not.
She recognizes this herself by so often taking the opportunity to nationalizing the election, linking her policies with the President’s and making the (correct) argument that she needs to win election to help ensure we have good judges getting onto the federal bench.
had a thing on this. This year is the seventh time in the TV-debate era (since 1960) an incumbent President has run against a challenger. 1976, 1980, 1984, 1992, 1996, 2004, 2012. The challenger was seen as the winner of the first debate six times, all but Bill Clinton in 1996. The 1976 one was odd because the TV network lost sound for a long time and the flow was disrupted.
1-6 means it’s hardly unprecedented to lose, though I think the point was that the scale of the loss was unprecedented. More sobering is that three of the five prior incumbents who lost the first debate also lost the election (Ford, Carter, GHWB). Reagan lost the debate but had a massive lead. And of course there’s Bush II.
But it’s hard to draw too much from the history books. Carter was losing (yes, losing) in the polls going in and had Iranian hostages, inflation, etc., to deal with. Ford had never been elected and had pardoned Nixon; the South was moving Republican but Carter was a Southerner, etc. And of course GHWB had Perot and a recession going the wrong way in 1992.
Better to focus on this election and what we can do. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Obama’s lead dropped 12 points in Mass. overnight and that’s going to last. The post-debate polling is already rebounding.
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