Via dkos, there appears to be some serious questions about the recent Suffolk poll showing Brown in a 9-point lead – questioned even by the polling outfit employed by Brown himself:
One possible explanation for the divergent results comes from the questions asked just before the vote preference question. Both the Suffolk and MassINC polls begin by asking voters whether they have favorable or unfavorable impressions of each of the candidates. The MassINC poll then immediately asks about vote preference, while the Suffolk poll also asks the following:
Q9. Does Senator Scott Brown deserve to be re-elected or is it time to give someone else a chance?Q10. What is the first word or phrase that comes to your mind when you hear the name Scott Brown?
Q11. What is the first word or phrase that comes to your mind when you hear the name Elizabeth Warren?
Q12. Does Elizabeth Warren have the experience to be a United States Senator?
Q13. Is Scott Brown a leader in the United States Senate, or a follower?
Q14. If the General Election for United States Senate were held today and the candidates were Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren for whom would you vote or towards whom would you lean at this time?
The two open-ended questions (Q10 and Q11) are not troublesome, but the order of the other items is. While each uses neutral wording, they may have the collective side-effect of reminding respondents, three times, that Scott Brown is an incumbent senator. They may also raise doubts about Elizabeth Warren’s experience while planting the suggestion that Brown has been a leader in the Senate, not a “follower.”
And it’s not just liberals questioning it, it’s poll outfits like the one Romney and Brown employ:
The issue on the Suffolk survey is similar to a criticism leveled earlier this month by Mitt Romney campaign pollster Neil Newhouse about a recent ABC News/Washington Post survey. Newhouse argued that just before measuring the Barack Obama-Romney sentiment, the pollsters asked a series of questions that “introduced specific negative information about Governor Romney.” These included a set of questions about three candidates — Romney, Newt Gingrich and President Obama — as well as several more specific items about Romney. These included a question about whether, given his “work as a corporate investor … Mitt Romney did more to create jobs or more to cut jobs,” and a question asking whether Romney “is or is not paying his fair share of taxes” having “paid about a 14% federal tax rate on income of about 22 million dollars last year.”
Asked to comment by the The Huffington Post, Newhouse — who is also the pollster for Scott Brown — said that the criticisms he leveled against the ABC/Washington Post poll would “absolutely” apply to the Suffolk poll, “though not to the same degree” as the ABC/Post poll.
Suffolk, of course, is pointing to the “but look how accurate we were in the special election!” argument to back their poll up. But in polling, past performance is not always indicative of future accuracy. When your poll is already an outlier, you should expect to have your methods examined with a fine tooth comb. Especially from other pollsters who have everything to gain from your loss of credibility, even if it hurts a candidate they are working for.
David Nir also argues that Suffolk isn’t one of the stronger poll outfits, to begin with.
I’d note that this poll has Obama leading Romney by “only” 14% (53%-39%), compared to other polls showing Obama with a lead similar to what he won in 2008 (about 21%).
This is relevant to the Brown-Warren race because it suggests that the sample happened to be more Republican-leaning than normal (not because of the demographic weights in the poll, which look fine, but just because this was a bit of an outlier).
I think the bipartisan agreement that this poll is bunk is a pretty sure sign. GOPers are not ones to pass on a favorable poll unless their data is telling them something less favorable.
All that said. Even if the figures are really the inverse, one clear fact that is indisputable, Elizabeth’s message needs to carried much further among supporters. Bunk or not, this poll is a call to action!
There’s plenty in all the other polls, in which she’s been up or there’s been a statistical tie, to leave room enough such that we know we can’t take this lightly. There’s no doubt Warren’s doing as well as anyone could expect, but there are still a few too many people who haven’t heard of her and Scott Brown’s still somehow able to win the favorable/unfavorable numbers, despite the fact he’s clearly a pandering (con)servative who will only dream of going against the national GOP when their vote’s already been decided and he’s just an extra.
I fully believe Warren’s going to eventually steamroll this intellectual lightweight, but it’s a long while yet before enough people are paying attention to see any of Brown’s warts and learn how strong an advocate Warren is for the 99%.
‘Nuff said, and true dat. That’s why I was out collecting signatures after our caucus today.
FYI – short report on the Lowell caucus, we did pull in new faces who came just to be for Elizabeth Warren. ^_^
Also, we did see Marisa Defranco at our caucus today. (We had state Sen. Eileen Donoghue speaking on behalf of Elizabeth Warren.)
I like Marisa, personally, but her tone is still totally off when it comes to her speaking style. Tone it down! Not everything needs to sound so angry or strident…particularly when talking about your background. Yes Dems want a fighter, but not someone who sounds so defensive. Also, thinly veiled attacks on Warren are really kinda amateur. Not that there’s really any way to gain traction against the Warren juggernaut anyway, but I do not think that is the way to go about it.
Frankly, there really isn’t much to attack Warren on anyway. Marisa’s “I’m the REAL progressive in this race” strikes me as a little untrue. If there’s something about Warren you think is not progressive, please point out this on an issue by issue basis, because by my count, as a progressive, I like where Warren stands.
And whining that Warren isn’t going to go fight a losing battle about single payer (she’s for it if it were really possible, as I recall from our podcast interview of Warren) isn’t going to cut it, sorry. (And it certainly won’t cut it against the lunchpail Democrats of LOWELL for god’s sake!)
Won’t voters be reminded that Brown is the incumbent Senator way more than three times before the election? And won’t they reflect a little bit on how they feel about his leadership in the Senator before deciding who to vote for? I can’t see how it is more accurate to ask people who they would vote for out of the blue, because maybe people forget who these names are at first, when they first answer the phone. People do appreciate an incumbent that they perceive has been doing a fine job and is reasonable and effective, so reminding people of the facts they will consider when they vote seems reasonable to me.
You really should read the *post*, my friend. It is clear from studies done that reminding someone right before asking them a who-will-you-vote-for poll question changes their answer on the spot. Or, more precisely, when all else being equal and you haven’t really made up your mind in a final way, a misleading poll may push you to answer in a possibly inaccurate manner.
Fact is, you’d SO be on the other side of this argument if this was a John Kerry reelection against a Republican challenger.
Your argument does not pass the shoe on the other foot test.
hinky, though it could be. There are also always outliers.
If I read your comment right, you seem to think the comments actually influence people’s thinking and thus the poll is a prediction of future effects on voters. That’s not the case. Had the order been reversed, Warren might have come out with a large lead. There’s no way of judging the order effect. The order could have masked a lower, but still significant, lead for Brown.
Follow the link to HuffPo and you’ll find:
Yes, that is absolutely true, as any pollster will tell you. Political polls are (almost) always conducted at a 95% confidence level, which means, basically, that one out of every 20 polls is just way off. Not saying that was the case with this one (there’s really no way to know for sure), but it’s something that should always be kept in mind.
for us and pollsters. Paleologos will think twice next time he runs a poll. He may do the same thing, but if he continues to be the outlier a la Rasmussen, everyone will know.
I haven’t studied the UMass methodology, but they use something called YouGov, which is a weighted poll. In the brave new world where people are increasingly not using land lines, they may be on to something.
It seems to me that if a couple of very mildly-suggested questions that could so easily move that many votes, there’s a lesson we need to learn here. We know Dems are solidly Warren. We know Republicans are solidly Brown. If Independents can so easily be moved to support Brown, then they were never really in her corner to begin with. Or they can be very easily moved from ‘not sure’ to Brown.
What I fear is that in the battle for the independent voters, which this poll suggests this election could end up being about, we will see Warren reticent to express strong progressive views on issues. The battle of polls is a dangerous one for Democrats. We have a chance in this state to be a leader, and elect someone who can represent progressive Democratic values. I don’t think when we get to November that Independents will go to Brown by more than 2-to-1. But even if they do, at least one of the lessons of the Coakley campaign is that the more you go to the middle or towards being ‘safe’, you lessen the motivation of Democrat voters. 2010 was won by Brown in part because of his 2-to-1 advantage among independents. Even so, with a better than 2-to-1 advantage with independents, Brown only won by 5 points. If Democrats had come out to vote in the numbers they came out later that same November, that advantage would have been easily surmounted.
Democrats will probably come out in big numbers of Obama in 2012. Let’s remember that with amazing voter turnout in 2008, the Democratic party did next to no GOTV in Massachusetts that year, focusing its energies on New Hampshire and elsewhere in the country (I think I personally phone banked 8 different states on election day).
Warren needs to speak to those Democrats who came out in 2008 for the first time, and to new Democrats will be motivated to vote in 2012 with real GOTV. In communities of color, in low-income areas, young voters, even voters in naturally progressive white communities, she needs to drive up turnout, she needs to make people excited about her message, she needs to build a grassroots organization. She needs to remind people every day what she brings to the table and how it will benefit their lives, and contrast that with Scott Brown.
That will be the difference in this election.
Moreso than the battle over independents.
The real battle is for unenrolled voters, a certain percentage trend Dem or Repub. The electorate breaks down thus:
I haven’t figured out what number of unenrolled voters trend Democrat and Republican, but my guess is most of them almost always vote one way or another. Then there’s a persuadable chunk that are truly unaffiliated. Martha Coakley probably lost the truly unaffiliated vote, and enough of the Democratically-trending voters to tip the scales to Brown.
My guess is that Republican-trending unenrolled voters is around 25-30%. Add them together with registered Republicans and that is 41% of the vote.
If the Democratic-trending unenrolled voters equal 10% of the electorate (a “conservative” estimate?), Warren is at 46% and needs to capture 5% of the truly unaffiliated electorate to win. If the number of Democratic-trending unenrolled voters is higher, she needs fewer.
This doesn’t mean it will be an easy race. Every race can be broken down this way. It also doesn’t mean she should suck up to a non-existent center like many Democrats do. Saying what she believes and defending it is the key to success. For us, the important think is to work hard and turn out the vote. We have cause for optimism, but optimism doesn’t win elections, good candidates and good work do.
because a LOT of people who trend Dem did NOT show up.
I hate the whole “she lost the battle for the independents” meme. It was turnout, and who got more of it. The tea partiers were wicked excited, and we were not.
“it was turnout, and who got more of it. “…can’t think of one election where that has not been true…no news…Coakley let her campaign be hijacked by the beltway boys and, hopefully, Warren will not do the same…that will be hard considering the beltway boys got her in the race.
“Coakley let her campaign be hijacked by the beltway boys”
I actually WISH that had happened. What appears to have really happened is that NO one hijacked her campaign – because there wasn’t one after the primary.
If there was any “conventional wisdom” in play it seems the state-based one of a Dem being a shoo-in for the seat of Ted Kennedy and therefore, you could ease up on campaigning. That’s definitely *beltway* CW.
And let’s face it, Coakley failed to connect to the electorate, because she’s bad at it. As a blogger who personally encountered her several times prior to that race and during, I can safely say even as an “insider” of sorts I felt that she was hard to connect to. If there was anyone she should have been eager to interact with, it’d be the activist bloggers who not only are there to do the work but can amplify your message to others who will also do the work.
It’s too bad, because my understanding is that in person she is quite nice, smart, and in a conversation one-to-one she can appear much more warm. She just couldn’t figure out how to have that conversation with the voters.
If we really want to rehash things, the timing of the election just after the holidays also did not help. But Brown worked it, and she did not.
Personally, I just consider the whole special election providence, since now we have someone like Warren running for the seat, and Brown was just there to keep it warm for her while we found the real deal.
“That’s definitely *beltway* CW” Should be “That’s definitely not *beltway* CW.
she was an anointed candidate and sold as a woman candidate as if demography were enough to elect someone. I don’t have any inside knowledge, but it seems to me the whole Democratic establishment, state and federal, dropped the ball.
She was the recognized candidate from a name recognition perspective in a short, near-holiday primary. And she WORKED the primary. She didn’t just breeze in, she did have an organization and I think beat everyone else fair and square (and *I* was a Cap girl). Sure, in a longer primary she might not have made it through, perhaps, in the same way that Niki Tsongas would likely have have been beat by Eileen Donoghue in the MA-05 race had it gone much longer (the polls were trending that way). But she did work it in the primary.
She stopped working once it hit the general.
It really is as simple as that…the establishment, ie the Walsh “insider outsiders grassroots” and the real insiders (the “old guard”) didn’t drop the ball insomuch as there really was no ball to drop. How can Walsh and people like me work for a candidate when you can’t even give away your volunteerism. I knew stories of dedicated insiders (your usual boots-on-the-ground suspects who work every campaign) who wanted and wanted to volunteer in the weeks leading up to the Jan general election, and no one would take them up on it.
I *have* insider information, and I’m telling you, the trite blaming of some sort of Democratic brahman class isn’t really applicable here.
insider info. I have no way of knowing it and believe what you have to say.
I’m not a particularly important when it comes to campaigns, but I’m connected enough to get phone calls when people run. I never got anything from Coakley.
it’s clear that Democrats stayed home in the special election and that independents came out in force for Scott Brown. Other than that, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Turnout in 2009 was 54% of registered voters in 2008, it was 74%.
Turnout will be up in 2012. All votes will matter. If Dems don’t turn out to support the ticket, all will be lost. If enough independents don’t support Warren, it won’t matter if 100% of Democrats show up.
And Commodore, I’m optimistic about Warren. I think she’s wise enough and experienced enough not to get shanghaied by Washington establishment. I don’t know if you want to see someone else nominated, but out here in the West, we don’t tend to support boutique candidates like DeFranco because they don’t spend any time making connections out here.
since before the cool kids were. But you are missing my point…let’s just say for sake of argument that a large proportion of unenrolleds really are Dem or R-leaning votes (which is true, I just don’t have the exact numbers). What you really are saying when you say “independents came out in force for Scott Brown” is that R-leaning unenrolleds came out for Scott Brown.
The thing about D- or R-leaning indys is that they are *less* dedicated voters. ie turning them out is harder. If they are not impressed or enthused, they scramble. Now, I am sure that truly neutral indys broke Brown’s way at the time, but most of them also probably didn’t show up! They are also usually not dedicated voters. (If they were, you’d probably see more of them in an actual party and making a commitment.)\
What I am arguing is that the “easy” storyline everyone wants to spew out in the media (and among activists and such) is that “indys broke for Brown and that lost us the special election.”
I just think that’s total bullshit. I hate that sort of lazy, uninformed reporting because it manages to totally futz up how we run elections. If Dems ran as strong progressives, and not hammered into appealing to the mythical “swing indy voters” we’d win more often and all be better off. From both a politics perspective (winning) and a policy one (better laws enacted that help more people).
If the 2010 special proved anything, it’s that it would be easy to overcome a 2:1 loss of unenrolled voters, if we had a candidate with the guts (other words came to mind) to run a campaign that not only appealed to left-leaning Dems, but worked extra hard to get them out to the polls. I am stunned that with everything that broke against Coakley 2 years ago, she still only lost by a measly 5 points.
Any of you who are town committee members with access to your local VoteBuilder accounts, I challenge you to take a look at Democratic turnout in your area in the special election, as compared to 2006, 2008, or November 2010, and tell me that Democrats didn’t leave a boatload of votes on the table in your community.
I don’t look at independents as a single block, but your challenge made me dig deeper into the numbers.