PPP conducted its poll on a day traditionally avoided: Friday. Silver says there is no proof that its polling method–robo-calls–are any less accurate than than live phone calls (some of the former actually outperformed some of the latter in 2008).
What interests me from a purely political geek perspective is the partisan breakdown part:
Rasmussen’s partisan ID breakdown is a bit less plausible than the other two, although as the Globe poll makes clear, there’s a big difference in Massachusetts between partisan registration and partisan identification, which makes this somewhat ambiguous.
The Globe poll explicitly mentions the name of the third-party candidate, the libertarian Joe Kennedy, and gives him 5 percent of the vote. The Rasmussen poll does not mention him by name, but provides a choice for “some other candidate”, who gets 1 percent. And PPP does not provide for a third party option at all. You can make a case either way here; although Kennedy is participating in the debates and getting a bit more attention than usual, there’s also some history of polls overstating the margins that third-party candidates receive on Election Day.
Globe/UNH is the local pollster, whereas Rasmussen and PPP are national ones. Rasmussen has nevertheless polled Massachusetts rather frequently before, although PPP hasn’t.
Silver doesn’t criticize any of the pollsters and acknowledges pluses and minuses for each of them. He makes no predictions other than the election could be a blow out or nailbiter. It makes me wish Coakley & Co. would get on their horses.
Mark
You write:
“Given the probabilities, he thinks Coakley et al. shouldn’t plan on cruising to victory (which seems to have been their campaign strategy).”
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p>Martha Coakley has run for DA twice, Attorney General and now US Senator…she has never run for office with the idea that she could just cruise to victory. That is not nor has it ever been her strategy. That is a myth perpetrated by opponents in their frustration at not being able to beat her.
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p>No one in their right mind or with any political experience at all would have predicted a 20% win for her in the Primary and certainly a double digit win in the final against a republican is not expected. Evewn ted kennedy could only best Romney by 17% and he had been a (male) US Senator for decades with 100% name recognition. If Coakley, the first woman to get this far, can defeat her centerfold opponent by even half of Kennedy’s spread, it will be a great win!
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p>Well, it would be nice to know what her strategy is. I’m speaking from my experience. Here in Western Mass it sure as hell looks like the strategy. One person I know working as a field coordinator for Coakley couldn’t get the campaign to return phone calls or emails.
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p>I’m not voting for the opponent, and I’m not basing my opinion on their myths. Just my experience, for better or worse.
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p>On the other hand, I find your last paragraph heartening.
I can’t even recall the name of the guy that ran against Coakley last time. Can you? Nor do I recall much activity locally to get her elected in 2006. Did I miss some non-cruising campaign activity?
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p>I’m happy to stand corrected, but what you write surprises me.
CQPolitics reports that Martha is leaving Massachusetts the week before the election to attend a fundraiser hosted largely by Washington lobbyists and Big Pharma,
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/ey… At least that’s some confirmation that she ever was on a “campaign trail” for the general election I suppose.
Almost all Brown supporters are planning to vote on Tuesday. There is a severe gradient among Coakley supporters whether they’ll vote on Tuesday. The main difference in the polls is what percentage of Coakley supporters the respective firms expect to vote.
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p>Thus, the real mission of the Coakley/Democratic apparatus isn’t convincing people to support Coakley, but to convince people supporting Coakley to vote.
OFA has sign ups on their website.
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p>We’ll be hosting a couple. IF we all turn out our networks and help make the GOTV calls, Coakley should be fine.
The kicker in the Globe poll released Sunday is the question:
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p>Regardless of which candidate you plan to vote for, which candidate do you think will win the election for the U.S. Senate: Scott Brown, Martha Coakley, or Joe L. Kennedy?”
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p>The results:
Brown Coakley Kennedy Don’t know
Brown voters 27% 63% 0% 10%
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p>Coakley voters 1% 90% 1% 7%
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p>I’ve never seen a result like this one before. 63% of BROWN voters think COAKLEY will win.
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p>As a consistency check, look at the response of Registered Republicans to the same question
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p>Registered 29% 58% 3% 10%
Republicans
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p>The notion that there is a large group of Brownies all fired up and ready to roll is simply not supported here. I think there will be a huge embarrassment in the PPP shop. Coakley by 13.
Silver is making a mistake by comparing demographics, partisan breakdown, etc., to the vote in 2008 or whatever other elections he’s referring to when he talks about what’s “normal” in Massachusetts. He seems to be unaware of the fact that the vote in special elections is not comparable to normal elections. Therefore, he leaves out the possibility that Rasmussen’s partisan breakdown is based on looking at other comparable elections, which would make a lot more sense than look at other recent statewide elections in general. I don’t know if that’s what they did, but I do no that I don’t trust Silver’s reasoning in this post when he shows no awareness of this.
The latest has a table.
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