You might be hearing in the media that, given Gabriel Gomez’s 16 point lead with unenrolled voters, motivating and turning out independent voters is a winning strategy for Gomez. Looking at the numbers more carefully, it is clear that Gomez cannot win by simply by turning out more unenrolled voters—he needs to significantly increase his margins with both Democrats and Independent voters to win—not very likely without a significant game changing event with four weeks until the election.
http://massnumbers.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-large-independent-voter-turnout-is.html
A large independent voter turnout is unlikely to bring Gomez a victory over Markey
Some recent news coverage on the topic of the Massachusetts Senate special election seems to imply that a large turnout of independent voters and a low turnout for Democrats would lead to a Gabriel Gomez victory on June 25. A detailed look at the party ID breakdown from all of the Markey/Gomez polls shows that given the candidates’ current levels of support, even an unprecedented turnout of independent voters at the expense of Democrats would not lead to a Gomez win.
As you say, independents alone won’t do it. Gomez needs to (1) hold virtually all Republicans; (2) make significant inroads among registered Democrats, some of whom are pretty conservative; (3) win independents by about 2-to-1. At this point it’s not clear he can do any of those things. I’ve noticed that Gomez’s performance among Democrats seems to be, surprisingly, no greater than Markey’s performance among Republicans.
I think this is right. But even by Gomez’s “sweep the independents” strategy, he’s going the wrong way, it appears. There are only two polls out by the same pollster post-primary, the two Emerson polls, and they have their weaknesses, being of registered voters. The overall size of the undecided has not changed much between these polls, so maybe the reported lead of 12% is all a statistical illusion. But Markey does seem to be gaining what Gomez is losing: the later Emerson poll shows Gomez’ negatives up, his lead among independents down, his lead among men reversed, and his deficit with women still substantial. So my bet is something real is happening here and that Markey’s ads may we working. (This does not mean other factors are not working for Markey too, of course.)