On the heels of Charlie Baker’s effort to spin the news with another internal poll – quite an unsuccessful effort, I might add – Suffolk has released a new poll showing what basically all independent polls have shown recently: Patrick holds a modest but real lead; Patrick does better in terms of the favorable/unfavorable rating; and voters overwhelmingly think he has the best temperament to be Governor.
Highlights from today’s poll (all the gory details available here) are:
Horserace: Patrick 46%, Baker 39%, Cahill 9%, Stein 2%, undecided 5%
Fav/unfav: Patrick +3 (47-44); Baker 0 (36-36)
Best temperament to be Gov: Patrick 46%, Baker 22%
Who will be elected: Patrick 59%, Baker 25%, Cahill 3%
One final point: among unenrolled voters, Baker leads by 11 points, 45%-34%. That sounds great, until you remember that at this very point in the special Senate election, Suffolk – which very nearly nailed the final result (the poll showed Brown up 50-46; the actual was 52-47) – had Brown ahead a staggering 35 points (65%-30%) among unenrolleds. So a modest 11 point lead won’t cut it for Baker – there’s no path to victory there.
If there’s a ray of good news in here for Charlie Baker, I honestly can’t spot it. The race shows no signs of moving, and Baker’s having been put on the defensive by his foolish embrace of Jeff Perry and the Big Dig memo make it unlikely that there will be much movement in his favor anytime soon. Furthermore, if you normalize Baker’s internal poll using Nate Silver’s 6% rule (he says that internals generally favor their candidate by about 6 points over independent polls), the polls are all pretty consistent.
The polls (the real ones, anyway) say Deval can and should win. All you have to do is make it happen.
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Baker lacks empathy and isn’t interested in rolling up his sleeves and solving the major problems that normal families, who can’t claim any CEOs in the household, have to deal with. That’s why he hasn’t been able to move the polls an inch in this election. People don’t trust him, while Patrick’s been a steady hand for years now.
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p>Think people are worried about taxes? How about the guy who raised insurance premiums by 150% in just a few, short years? That’s the biggest tax increase — and probably biggest expense after the mortgage — that Baker’s costumers faced.
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p>People know this is a difficult time which requires serious people who bring real solutions. All Baker has is anger and gimmicks. Patrick’s the leader we need, and that’s why he’s going to earn his comfortable victory margin come November 2nd.
Let’s try to be generous and find some good here for Brown.
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p>First, just over one-third of the electorate (39%) appear to know who he is. Progress. July 2009: “CHARLIE WHO? Most voters don’t know much about Charlie Baker”
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p>Second, the pollsters got his name right and didn’t set up a matchup with Linus, Lucy, and Snoopy:
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p>Always look on the bright side of life:
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From Channel 7
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p>”We’re past persuasion at this point – we’re into who turns out,” Paleologos said. “And if a large chunk of Deval Patrick supporters from our poll don’t show up next Tuesday, Charlie Baker could win.”
The ray of good news for Baker is the high number of voters who expect Patrick to win. Democrats need to insure that this kind of reporting itself does not have an effect on voting behavior by reducing the incentive for Democrats to vote.
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p>TedF
Rasmussen has a poll today moving in the wrong direction.
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p>GOTV.