Massachusetts’ spirited gubernatorial contest remains largely unchanged this month, with incumbent Democratic Governor Deval Patrick holding onto a small lead.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Bay State finds Patrick with 38% support, while Republican Charlie Baker picks up 32% of the vote. Democrat-turned-Independent candidate Tim Cahill continues to trail with 17%. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided.
Here’s a quickie comparison between today’s poll and Rasmussen’s last one, which came out about a month ago:
Today (June 23)
Patrick: 38% (41%) -3
Baker: 32% (34%) -2
Cahill: 17% (16%) +1
So Patrick and Baker have both dropped a few points; Cahill picks up one; everything’s within the margin of error.
There’s modest improvement in the job approval ratings.
Job Approve/Disapprove today (June 23)
Patrick: 50/49 (48/50) net swing: +3
Not a lot of movement, but hitting 50% job approval is significant – it’s been a while since that happened.
So, overall, could be better, but sure could be worse. Considering that Patrick is the one candidate not on the airwaves yet, the Patrick team can’t be too unhappy about this.
dumped so far to go absolutely nowhere?
Except that, realistically, Stein would be lucky to poll 4%. Cahill got 17%.
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p>I think the hard thing pollsters face is that 4th party candidates almost never pull in more than 2%, but if they poll the candidate now, the candidate gets something like 5%. Why? Two reasons perhaps: (1) folks want “somebody else” until they hear more, and then decide that the candidate is too zany, and (2) folks are willing to back somebody until the last minute, but then the first past the post system of voting means choosing the lesser of two perceived evils, and that’s what lots of voters do. Nobody wants to vote for Nader instead of Gore any more.
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p>So, if you’re polling to know who’s popular now, by all means poll Stein too. If, however, you’re polling to try and understand who will win the election, including Stein may introduce more error than it eliminates.
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p>If Cahill fizzles out, I’d expect them to stop polling him too. Likewise, if Stein had 1/10th of the money or visibility of Cahill, she’d be stronger than she is now.
The Rasmussen poll did include one very interesting result. Despite millions in negative ads by the RGA attempting to tear down Baker’s opponents, and over a half a million in positve ads intended to introduce Baker to the voters, Baker’s favorable / unfavorable numbers are 36% fav, 46% unfav.
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p>That’s not a typo – the candidate who still has to introduce himself to the voters has managed to give 46% OF VOTERS AN UNFAVORABLE IMPRESSION.
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p>That’s quite a turnaround in one month – from a plus 11 spread in June to a minus 10 deficit in July – a total 21 point fall in the same month Baker is on air with positive intro ads.
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p>Guess voters are seeing through the misrepresentations, dodges on issues like climate change and transgender rights, and negative attack ads.
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p>There is a long way to go, and our campaign has a lot of work to do to put us in a position to win in November. But it’s clear from this poll at least that Baker’s first impression with the voters has not been a good one.
and leans to the right. I wonder what BigDigBaker’s real negatives are?
The 21-point negative swing is incorrect. The initial Globe report got the numbers wrong, and it has now been corrected. Details here.