As Charley noted earlier this week, a new State House News poll shows Tom Reilly with a still-commanding lead over Deval Patrick in the Democratic primary, but with Patrick’s “Deval who?” numbers still near 80%, which would seem to give Patrick a lot of running room to reach voters he hasn’t reached yet.
Some of the breakdowns in the Reilly/Patrick matchup caught my eye. Overall, according to this poll, Reilly leads Patrick 50-27. But the race is significantly closer among men (47-34) than among women (53-21), and Patrick continues to find it tough to reach younger (aged 18-39) voters (Reilly leads 50-21 in that category). The age breakdown is consistent with an earlier poll that seemed to show a similar problem for Patrick; I continue to be somewhat surprised by that result, but it’s now shown up in two polls. Perhaps these results are at least partly explained by the fact that the “Deval who?” numbers are 84% both for women and for voters aged 18-39; the numbers are lower for men (74%) and for older voters (78%). (Interestingly, the men/women disparities did not show up in the Globe/UNH poll, which maybe tells us the most important thing of all: it’s probably too early to think too much about polls.)
I guess Deval needs to do more to get his name out there. Maybe when he rakes in all the Delegates who know who both candidates are, and wins the Convention he can start reaching out more to the general voter rather than the activist/delegate.