I think it’s very bad news for Reilly. It’s actually surprising his horserace number is as good as it is, given these internals. He’s liked by about the same percentage of voters as the other two, disliked by considerably more (24R, 14G, 10P) and has the least room to grow since he’s the best known. He also doesn’t have the money to redefine this race in the closing weeks. The corpulent woman is warming up her vocal chords.
This is a very close race between the other two. Gabs may just use his money to keep fine-tuning his positive ads — he has the flexibility to change messages almost daily with new productions and ad buys. And you can bet he has the best internal polling operation.
But the danger for Gabs is that quarter of the electorate that doesn’t yet know Patrick. If Patrick becomes anywhere near as popular with this group as he is with the 75% who do know him, that plus his field operation will probably be enough to win.
So IMHO Gabs takes the risk and comes after Patrick in his ads and in the debates. How Patrick responds, and whether he has sufficient money to be heard, will likely decide the primary.
All of this, of course, is predicated on no major scandal, gaffe, or cataclysm.
Anyhow, that’s how I see it. Love to hear other views. Strap ’em on, friends. The real fun begins now.
maverickdem says
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2-1 favorable/unfavorables are still very good. If, indeed, Gabrieli and Patrick go at it, Reilly is in a great position to benefit.
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I’m not surprised that his “horserace number is good as it is,” I think it will look better as time goes on.
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eury13 says
Attack ads hurt two people: the attacker and the attackee. In a 2-person race, the attacker hopes that the attack is effective enough that it hurts his opponent more than him. In a 3-or-more-people race, the candidates who benefit are the ones who stay out of the much.
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Frankly I think that Reilly would have higher fav’s or lower unfav’s if he hadn’t spent so much time going after Patrick. (Not saying that to bait Reilly supporters… just my attempt at an objective opinion.)
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Gabrieli’s strong because he’s blanketing everyone with positive messages about himself. Patrick’s strong because he’s been remarkably effective at utilizing a grassroots campaign for maximum exposure and effect. Reilly got a great start, but he defined himself before the other candidates did and once they were getting more coverage and exposure, his campaign didn’t know what to do so they went on the attack. This was fine when it was just him and Patrick, but now…
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Anyways, the real question is whether or not Patrick can get in touch with everyone else in the next 3.5 weeks.
sabutai says
First of all, I can’t buy the “Reilly spent so much time going after Patrick” — what is this based on, the “Killer Coke” stuff? That was a great tempest in the teapot of Mass. political junkies, but how many voters actually care? Go ahead — go up to 10 voters and ask them what they think about the Killer Coke activism “scandal.” Considering that 1/4 of voters don’t know who Deval Patrick is — you think they know about some OCPF inside baseball?
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I know most people here will regard polls as one of two things: good news for Deval Patrick, or wrong. That said, the biggest figure here is his abysmal name recognition — 75%. That’s an improvement of only 13% in six months! This merely confirms my belief that Deval’s grassroots fervor won’t translate to effective GOTV — how are his supporters going to collect votes for him when they can’t even tell people about him?
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And I’m talking about people who aren’t active in politics but quietly vote. This aren’t people who go up to a town committee table at a fair, or work on Victory 06. They don’t make for great anecdotes, they hang up on pollsters, they just quietly vote and people scratch their heads that night and wonder where the numbers came from.
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PS: If Deval’s name recognition is this abysmal among Democrats, it must be worse still among the unenrolled voters we need to court to win in November. I can imagine Healey running rings around us as we try to tell voters why they’ve never heard of our nominee.
cos says
Most of the people you’re talking about, just don’t pay attention this early. It’s only in September that they’ll start to try to find out who the candidates are. So they’ve seen Gabrieli’s TV ads, which makes his name familiar to them. Patrick will probably run more ads soon and the same will happen. But 75% familiarity in August doesn’t say anything particularly negative, it just lets us know how fluid the other numbers are. Trying to make it into some big blow against the campaign is reaching beyond rationality, IMO.
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Things look good for Patrick and Gabrieli, and not quite so good for Reilly (but not awful). eury’s question is the right one: What will Patrick do to reach the rest of the voters in the closing weeks, and how effective will it be.
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The point of activist support is to create the tools with which to reach the rest of the voters. For example, to raise money so he can run TV ads. To have volunteers so he can run a GOTV on election day. I don’t see how any sane case can be made that 75% recognition now, indicates anything about how useful Patrick’s activist support is. If we had a “control Patrick” who was otherwise similar but without the activist support and could see that fewer people knew about him, or just as many did, then we could conclude one way or the other. But we’re not gonna get that, so I think you’re just making up the meanings you’d like to be.
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Also, recognition before the primary is completely useless as a way of forecasting the general election. Once someone becomes the Democratic nominee, voters who are going to vote in the general and aren’t already dead-set on one party or the other, will find out who that nominee is. So will most everyone else, by election day.
sabutai says
Cos, you’re a good dude, and I’m 99.9% we were working out of the same office in Cedar Rapids, but we got a little pot-kettle-black thing going on here. We’re both seeing things that benefit us.
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And I realize tv spending will raise the numbers a bit. Another point, though, is that TV ads are having smaller and smaller impacts. This September, Deval may be seen as “that guy who isn’t Gabrieli”. It’s tough for him to have an impact when seriously outspent. Plus, i nthe DVR age, how many people even see the ads.
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I’m just struck by the fact that his name recognition moved so slightly after 6 months of gladhanding all over the state. One of the Patrick Campaign Talking Points™ is the power of his grassroots to spread the good word, resulting in votes from “regular people” disengaged from the system. Yet so many regular people don’t know who he is. And despite leading the polls, hustling support all over the state, and the press coming from his convention experience, his name recognition only moved 13%.
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I’d be worried if my candidate had such name recognition in the 70s with such little time left, after so much work. Television is a weak weapon at this point in time, especially on a weak budget. But we all see what we want to see, I suppose.
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I do admire your faith in voters to go out and get information. It doesn’t square with a lot of information out there about voter knowledge, but we can hope.
publius says
There’s three things.
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Horserace: Patrick essentially tied with Gabs, slim lead over Reilly.
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Favorability Ratio: the extent to which you tend to make a favorable impression on voters. Patrick best.
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Name recognition: just what it says. To the extent you are not known yet, the degree to which you are not is your “room to grow.”
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The thing is, you need to read them all together to assess the situation, not pick and choose your favorite stat.
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If Patrick was at 20% in the horserace, I’d agree that 25% not knowing him now was a problem. He’s not. He’s tied for the lead. And, to the greatest extent of any of the three, when people know him they tend to like him. And he has the most room to grow.
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Patrick will grow in name rec as the stragglers tune in and as his TV buy increases in the last three weeks. If the new people like him at anything like the 5 to 1 ratio of the first 75%, game over.
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The opposite situation is Reilly’s. Third in the horserace, least room to grow, and among those who do know him, a much higher percentage of unfavorables. Bye, Tom.
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Risky for Gabs to be the first to go negative in a serious, visible way. But may be his only choice.
sabutai says
Yes, low recognition makes for great room to grow. And my recent accident was a wonderful opportunity to upgrade my ride.
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Your name recognition point is taken, and I realize it’s true. If this were June, I’d be excited, but as I’ve said in the past, 3 weeks is a short time to make those changes.
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And I stand by my assertion that it is also indicative of his campaign’s weak spot. The two points are not contradictory — are you willing to accept them both?
publius says
I think I’m agreeing with you that room to grow is an opportunity, not a done deal. If you come to primary day and 15% of the voters still don’t know who you are, it’s like a plane that leaves the gate with empty seats — the opportunity to sell them is lost forever.
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The question, I think, is: with four weeks to go (at the time of the survey), and Deval’s TV just having started, and the debates and increased media coverage still to come, is 25% of likelies not knowing him such a bad sign. After 7 1/2 years as AG, 8 years as DA of the state’s biggest county, and a fairly big TV buy, there were still 8% who didn’t even know Tom. I am willing to bet my Red Sox playoff tickets (ouch) that many of that 8% are also among the 25% who don’t know Deval — they’re people who are pretty oblivious to what’s going on. Some slice of them are probably miscategorized as “likely voters” in the survey.
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I am not ready to say that 25% not knowing him indicates a weakness in Patrick’s campaign. When we’re ten days out from the primary let’s revisit this point with fresh polling. But IF it turns out that Deval’s “don’t knows” are down to the 10-12% range by then AND — crucial point — he’s maintaining close to his current 5 to 1 favorability ratio, he will probably win this thing. Do we agree on that too?
sabutai says
Heck, if he has a 5-1 ratio on Election Day, Deval’s probably doin’ better than Ratzinberger was when he was elected Pope. Heck yeah he’d win. On the other hand, if those are his numbers on Election Day, he deserves to win because it says the other campaigns haven’t done their job.
eury13 says
I wasn’t even thinking about the killer coke stuff, because you’re right; most people don’t know or don’t care.
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For months, Reilly has been badgering Patrick (and I use the word ‘badgering’ intentionally) about his tax returns and ameriquest and this or that from his corporate record and financial situation. While these may be valid questions that some voters care about, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most voters see them as petty, nitpicking, and incredibly weak on Reilly’s part.
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Those are the attacks I’m talking about. If Reilly wants to go after Patrick, he needs to come up with something big. Swift boat big. (Even if it’s absolute crap.) Death by a million paper cuts isn’t going to work here.
sabutai says
I honestly doubt there’s a knockout blow in Deval’s past. Or Chris’s
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But I don’t think that’s why Reilly is doing it. I think — in his mind at least — it’s an attempt to mesh with his persona as a fighter. Sure, the forays become background noise, but they leave an impression. So the question becomes which narrative grounded in this pattern gains more strength:
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I don’t know which will work — nobody does — but we’ll see soon enough.
southshoreguy says
I posted elsewhere that this poll had some positives and negatives for each candidate. You did a real nice job outlining many of the key takeaways in this poll. That noted, I really like Gabrieli’s position. He has the most $ to get his message out and respond to any attacks or distortions. His growth over 5.5 months is incredible and noteworthy – similar to Patrick’s over the past year. If it is essentially tied, I always like the candidates who are lesser known (Patrick and Gabs) as it provides more room for growth opportunities, perceived as outsiders this year (same two), and well funded (big edge Gabrieli there). The lesser known candidates/commodities typically pick up a bigger share of the remaining undecided vote at the close if they can effectively convey their message.
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Reilly’s best hope is for a low turnout day to best leverage his “institutional” support. He also needs to hope that both Gabrieli and Patrick do not close the deal with the voters over the next few weeks. If one does, he is in trouble. If they both do not, then that opens the door for people to vote for the “known commodity”.
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This looks and feels like 1990 in many ways. That was the year that Weld and Silber came on strong to take their respective primaries over perceived insiders and favorites Steve Pierce and Frank Bellotti.
publius says
is actually almost 4 to 1, not 3 1/2 to 1 as I initially wrote. Should have stopped after 2 Kool Aids.
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(If I wasn’t such a computer feeb I’d make the correction in my original post — can someone help me out? Thanks.)
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susan-m says
Just underneath your name should be a link that says, [edit diary]
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Make with the clicky and it takes you back to the posting page. Make any corrections you need.
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For extra blogger points, be sure to reference any corrections you make so people don’t think they’re going crazy when they come back and your user post is changed. You can go with something like this:
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UPDATE: Edited to correct sucky math. (or similar)
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Good blogging to ya. đŸ™‚
publius says
Surgery was successful.
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Next I’ll learn how to link and blockquote. đŸ˜‰
charley-on-the-mta says
… and addictive. See here — just use the “blockquote” tag.
terri-buchman says
Her unfavorable rating was 41% in March. It is now up to 53%. This really is a golden opportunity to take back the Governor’s office in Nov.