Ed Markey is out-fundraising Gabriel Gomez by a substantial margin. Why does this matter? Besides the obvious (the Markey campaign can spend more), Gomez’s fundraising ability is a key indicator of whether he’s got a chance to pull off another GOP special election upset, according to a Nate Silver post last month:
…if there is one thing to watch in the next couple of weeks, it will be how much financial support he receives from rank-and-file Republicans. In 2010, Mr. Brown’s fund-raising was spectacular after he became the Republican nominee. He had raised about $15 million in individual contributions by the special election date, roughly double Ms. Coakley’s $7.3 million. That was a sign that something special was going on.
Well, it looks like nothing special is going on in this race. Between April 11 and June 5, the Markey campaign took in $3.1 million while Gabriel Gomez’s campaign raised $2.1 million (including, it appear, $300K Gomez loaned his campaign), CQ Roll Call posted today.
While there was no new independent poll news today, Republican outfit Harper Polling conducted a poll on behalf of Conservative Intel which finds Markey up by 12 points, 49-37. This poll claims that Markey and Gomez are tied among independents while each get roughly the same percent of their own party’s voters: Markey with 80% of Democrats and Gomez with 81% of Republicans. And of course there’s no way a Republican can win in Massachusetts without a substantial lead among independents.
Overall, this poll says that Gomez trails among women voters by a whopping 26 points while he’s tied among male voters.
I don’t actually take any partisan polls seriously, but the fact that a GOP pollster is showing Gomez down by double digits is moderately interesting since another recent Republican poll claimed the race was within margin of error. I also find it intriguing that this poll shows Markey crushing among voters 66 and older: 54-36. I continue to believe that Gomez ridiculing Markey’s years of experience is not going over well with older voters.
The election is a week and a half away. I have yet to see any credible independent data that shows this race even within margin of error, let alone any signs of what happened in 2010. Now it’s all about GOTV and making sure Markey’s supporters get to the polls.
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