Public Policy Polling is first out of the gate to poll MA voters on the two US Senate nominees, and the answer is: could be close. Ed Markey holds a 44-40 lead over Gabriel Gomez, with 16% undecided. This was a good-sized poll – 1,539 respondents, so only a 2.5% margin of error. Other details:
Gomez is starting out as a pretty popular candidate, with 41% of voters rating him favorably to 27% with an unfavorable opinion. Beyond having good numbers with Republicans he’s at 42/24 with independents, and actually seen narrowly positively even by Democrats at 33/32. Voters meanwhile are more divided on Markey, with 44% holding a positive view of him to 41% with a negative one. He’s at 31/50 with independents….
The good news for Markey in the poll beyond the obvious fact that he’s in the lead is that Barack Obama remains pretty popular in the state. He has a 53/41 approval rating. Obama was at only 44/43 when Brown won in 2010 and the President’s lack of popularity was a big contributor to the upset. He’s in a much better position this time around. The pool of undecided voters also sets up well for Markey- they voted for Obama by 18 points in November, 32% are liberals compared to only 25% who are conservatives, and 61% of them are women. Those are all demographics that ought to end up favorable to him in the end.
As I said a couple days after Gomez won, he will be the flavor of the week for a while, and that is IMHO almost certainly reflected in these poll numbers – particularly with Lynch voters who may need a while to shake off the primary campaign. But make no mistake: at least at first glance, Gomez is an appealing guy and must be taken seriously. Here’s hoping the media actually do their job, which in this case I’d say is to force the candidates to explain what they actually think about things, rather than letting them get away with the usual bromides. If they do that, it seems unlikely to go well for Gomez.
oceandreams says
Favorables are moderately interesting at this point, but things are so likely to change in a race like this where one candidate is mostly unknown to most of the voters that it’s too early to consider this a prediction of June results.
What I found noteworthy is how PPP is modeling likely voters. 57% of likely voters in this poll said they voted for Obama in 2012; 39% were Romney voters in ’12. Actual results last fall were 61-38. So they’re assuming a lower percentage of 2012 Obama voters will show in June. GOTV, as we already know, will be critical.
Peter Porcupine says
We may only NEED a while….
(I am a recovering Winslow supporter, and haven’t acutually met Gomez yet. If he doesn’t repel me, I’ll work for him.)