Patrick’s advisers, who would not speak for attribution because they do not publicly discuss strategy, said polling data from the weekend showed that Healey’s attack ads have backfired by hurting her own standing among voters more than Patrick’s. The advisers said Patrick and his aides decided not to launch a negative counteroffensive.
“Our polls show that the overriding issue is that voters believe that the Romney-Healey administration has taken the state in the wrong direction and they believe Deval Patrick can change that,” said Patrick’s senior campaign adviser, Doug Rubin, who refused to discuss details of the surveys.
At the Healey campaign, one strategist said the campaign is convinced that she has caused considerable damage to Patrick’s standing among voters with her critical ad campaign and that the race has tightened. The strategist indicated Healey has cut Patrick’s lead roughly in half, while reducing her unfavorable rating and raising his.
The question is: where does the race really stand currently? The last poll made public was released six days ago, too early to measure the effect of the recent controversy related to the convicted rapist or the cop-killer stories. If Patrick is losing his lead, we have to pressure him to go after Healey in a major way. We can’t lose this election because we are too timid.
Let’s hope we get the real story soon.
Cross posted on Daily Kos
these commercials are very dangerous for healey. I’m sure they’ve upped her numbers for now, but here’s why they’re dangerous:
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1. They’ll increase her negatives. Negative ads always increase the negatives in terms of likeability and trust for people make them. With Kerry Healey’s negatives already VERY high, that’s dangerous.
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2. While they may bounce her scores up, she’s targeted Deval on issues that are fairly easily explained (the Songas and LaGuer issues). Not that many people are going to stick to Healey because of them – if Deval properly explains them (which I think he’s currently doing)
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3. She’s trying to paint Deval as weak on crime – in great measure because of those ads. However, Kerry Healey’s administration has a very poor record and she’s very suspectible to criticism in this department. Furthermore, Deval Patrick has some serious credentials from the US Justice Department.
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4. There are 2-3 debates left. Does anyone seriously think Deval isn’t both going to use those opportunities to easily explain what happened and bring up Kerry Healey’s own negatives in terms of crime? All of her work now could seriously backfire after those debates (through a LOT of free media and the actual debate) and through some paid media and Deval ads.
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So, Kerry Healey certainly could have dropped Deval’s numbers down… but I don’t think they’ll stick and she could have really done more long-term damage here than good.
You will probably see a bump in the next poll, but to maintain it she is going to need to explain why people need to vore for her instead of not voting for someone else. Based on the numbers of favorability for Healey and the current administration I don’t see that happening. It will be a short lived bump.
I’ve always thought that some of Patrick’s huge lead must be soft and that the race was bound to tighten. Then also, we did not have a good week, with missteps keeping Laguer in the news for much longer than it deserved.
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So even if his huge lead has been halved, it is still substantial.
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I’m as curious to know the latest poll as anyone, but really the state of the race is much more than that.
Jon Keller will be doing the review.
The fact that we’ve seen no major poll conducted since Laguer has sunk in is interesting and frustrating. The spin from campaigns about “internal polling” is notoriously unreliable.
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Until proven otherwise, I continue to believe this issue (and the bumbling response from the campaign) has and will continue to hurt Patrik a lot. Just in the past few days, we’ve seen both the family being trotted out and the new Healey ad on the topic. Neither of these would have happened (in my opinion) if a) The issue was not resonating with voter and registring in internal polls or b) The Healey campaign didin’t think it could still string this out for more gain.
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I’ll stop being so pessimistic if Deval’s lead is still over 10 points in a reliable, public poll taken sometime in the last seven days.
according to SurveyUSA released today. See front page post.
It’s still 18. Despite losing a lot of support from men and independent voters, Patrick has held on to his huge lead among women and Democrats. I feel a lot better this morning with that news.
Healey thought she’d cut the lead in half? Maybe she made the mistake of relying on her push polls for data. I’m sure she’ll smell blood and get nastier, but she needs more than this.
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She has not changed most people’s answer to the fundamental question: can she run the state better than Deval Patrick?
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