The Herald‘s front cover this morning says Ed Markey’s sitting pretty in a new poll. I didn’t buy the rag, but I did flip through to the story. UMass Lowell has a new poll out, commissioned by the Herald, showing Markey up 56-36 among likely voters and 53-32 among registered voters. 608 registered voters were surveyed, but only 312 of them qualified as likely voters under the pollster’s screen. That sample’s a little small, but the similarity in margin between LV and RV could indicate there’s no enthusiasm gap.
By one indication, there’s not much enthusiasm at all. There’s been a more than 20 percent dropoff in absentee ballot requests compared to the comparable point before the 2010 special, which had slightly lower turnout than most non-Presidential elections in recent years. (Possible explanations, other than voter apathy: (1) voters were more concerned about the weather in the January 2010 election and more likely to vote in person in this one; (2) many retired Bay Staters also spend the winter months away and are home now).
This is UMass Lowell’s first survey in the race since early in the primary season; in March they showed Markey up 48-29 on Gomez is what was then a hypothetical matchup. No crosstabs yet, but the Lowell Sun reports the poll shows Markey up a whopping 29 points among women. Many more people know who Gomez is than UML’s March poll, but that isn’t helping: his unfavorables are way up. Markey is at 48-34 (+14).The pollster concludes Gomez is just about running out of time to make up ground.
It is true that the UML poll gives Markey a far larger lead than any to date (except the May Suffolk poll showing him up 52-35) and a margin more than double the polling average of about 9 points. The sample does seem a little Democrat-friendly: President Obama has 61% approval, a few points higher than in other recent polls. Nonetheless, Gomez’s score of 36% is not that far off his ceiling, in all independent polling, of about 40%. My guess: the poll’s a little optimistic for Markey, but not off by that much.
(UPDATE: Perhaps not such an outlier. MassLive reporting another poll, from New England College, has Markey up 20 (56-36, and up 29 among women, just like the UML poll). NEC had Markey up 12 a few weeks ago. A third poll, from Emerson College (which had Markey up 12, 45-33, around May 20-22), shows Markey leading by 10, at 51-41. All of these polls have Markey over 50, Gomez is capped at 41 (the new Emerson poll).)
Meanwhile, Gomez’s campaign continues to leak internal polls showing a race even tighter than the polling average. But all of these polls show Gomez falling farther behind, not closing the gap. For example, the Gomez people are citing GOP-friendly McLaughlin (polling for the misleadingly-named right wing Americans for Progressive Action), which shows the race at 47-44 Markey. But McLaughlin’s last poll had it at 45-44, an outlier if ever there was one. In the new one, Gomez is down 3 instead of 1, and his favorables are down 7 while his unfavorables are up 6. Maybe all that pretend-liberal talk at the debates is irritating the base, but they’ll vote for him anyway?
Likewise, the movement is against Gomez in the leaked internal poll from OnMessage, which last week had Gomez losing 47-40 after having him down only 46-43 early May. None of these internals show Gomez winning, and it makes you wonder what the point of releasing them is. But Lynch did the same, releasing an internal poll that showed him down “only” 6 points a few days before he lost by more than 15. What can you do but hope to convince your voters it might be close and they should show up?
Predictably, the Markey campaign is citing the single-digit GOP polls (but certainly not the 20-point leads) in its latest fundraising email:
“With one week to go Gomez remains within striking distance” — Republican Polling memo, 6/18/13
Our opponent’s internal polling still shows this as a single-digit race. In a special election, with under a week left, we cannot take any chances.
OK, fun with polls over. Special elections remain low-turnout and unpredictable. Time to canvass. We can’t leave anything to chance.
I’m getting sick of the chicken little sky is falling emails I get twice a day from the DSCC. Has anyone there ever heard of the boy who cried wolf?
I got off their list back in the Lieberman days. The DSCC is a protection racket for people who worship the filibuster over the American people. I’ll donate to Mark Begich directly, thank you, but I’m not having my donation hijacked to fight off a progressive in a race where we could have one.
What kind of track record do these groups have that are cited in this post? What is the party distribution in their sample, and how did they contact those polled? Was it cell, land line, and by what mix? All these can significantly change the result. Don’t get me wrong, I’m cheered by these numbers, but have to take them with a grain of salt, beyond even the snapshot in time point.
UMass Lowell here. They did have Brown up a point the day before last November’s election, but otherwise their record’s not too bad. This poll was 2/3 landline, 1/3 cell phone. Overlapping dual-frame random digit dial of MA area codes. D 43% of RVs, I 42%, R 11% (as I indicated before seeing the breakdown, it seems a little Dem-friendly; this is more appropriate for a LV sample, and even that should have a few more Republicans).
NEC here. 579 respondents by phone, both landlines and cell phones, not sure of exact mix. Identical Markey surge among women, and rise in Gomez unfavorables. Again, Obama approval (59%) remains high. Markey leads 65-29 among the 58% of respondents saying they’d been contacted by a campaign. Not sure of exact partisan breakdown, but based on the math it looks like about 39% D, 50% U, 11% R.
Emerson methodology here. Robo-call, huge sample (1,422) all screened for LV status. 41% D, 48% U, 11% R. Sample overwhelmingly slanted to 60+ (54% of sample), who are more likely to vote, it’s true, but also most likely to vote for Gomez. Showing a huge gender gap again (55-36) but not quite as much as other two polls.
There’s significant consistency between these three polls. I think they’re in the ballpark, though Markey might not win by 20.
Ed Markey is a decent man who has worked hard for us. He has earned the right to be the recipient of our efforts.
Ignore these polls. Stay focused. We need your help to Get Out the Vote.
Nonstop GOTV now until Tuesday.
I would really like to believe this but if you noticed Warren and Patrick’s approval ratings in this poll are 12 points. Now maybe the voters have gotten suddenly enthusiastic about Deval (Elizabeth I can imagine) but somehow I doubt it. What I suspect has happened is that, as can happen in random polling (especially when large percentages of people don’t respond), they got a funny sample.
If Markey wins by more than 10 points it will only because of our ground game. See you out knocking on doors this weekend.
But Patrick was in the low 60s in some other recent polling that wasn’t as favorable to Markey. Haven’t seen much recent data on Warren but she’s been in the news.
Ground game is the key. This is it, people.
and yes the only “poll” that counts is on election day BUT lets be honest. The chances of Gomez winning this election are pretty close to zero. This election has always been about running up the score to keep A List challengers out of the 2014 Senate race and maybe even keep good ole Charlie Baker out of the Governors race and I am okay with that. I will be knocking on doors and on the phones starting mid afternoon tomorrow and not stopping until the polls close on Tuesday (well except to earn time and half on Sunday. Thanks massachusetts libruls!!!) but I have no need to pretend the analytical data does not exist as we are the reality based community after all.
When the blue laws were lifted it was presumed that workers would need an incentive to be willing to work on Sundays, a day they’d always had off. Many a business group whined about this last week at the minimum wage hearings on Beacon Hill.
that the right approach would be to have 1.25x on Saturday and 1.25x on Sunday. Society treats weekends different from weekdays. With the exception of the NFL and college football, I can’t think of a reason to treat Sundays differently from Saturdays. Why not “split” the difference and pay both days time and a quarter?
In a still majority-Christian society there are a lot of folks who treat Sundays differently from Saturdays, even among those whose Sunday plans don’t regularly include actual church attendance.
No that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit at home, etc., etc. But imagine the reverse. Imagine if you went on a South Caorlina blog and commentators were freaking out because the Republican Senate candidate was only up by 10-12 points in all the latest polls. Would you be thinking there was a good shot that the Democrat would win?
That almost never happens and when those kinds of leads do exist, the gaps tend to close fast.
All that said, I got a lot of enjoyment out of reading the Herald’s pity party take on it.
It’s all the fault of negative ads! And big money! As if Gomez didn’t have those… but that’s not all! The very fates have conspired against Gomez, according to the Herald, which lists the Bruins, the Marathon and “Boston Strong” all as reasons why Markey is winning, instead of Gomez’s terrible campaign and Markey’s strong record doing the things the people of Massachusetts have already elected him for 37 years to do.
It couldn’t possibly be, for one second, that people actually want Ed Markey over Gabriel Gomez. To the Boston Herald, that is inconceivable, even if it is the truth.
Granted I’m still not sure it makes any sense. I haven’t been watching hockey, but the ads I have seen are not what I would call attack ads, just contrast ads using Gomez’s own words. I also have overall seen a rough balance of ads for each candidate, but I don’t know if that holds during the Stanley Cup.
decide what to quote and what not to quote. It was absolutely an editorial decision.
has a front-page story today about voter apathy in Braintree, a town where Scott Brown cleaned up. 61% turnout there in 2010, but the story quotes a number of locals who say most people have no idea when the election is this time. Reasons cited: Bruins, Bulger, Marathon.
The article’s mostly about Gomez’s challenge in inspiring voters in the towns he needs to win big. Personally I don’t care how it happens, as long as Markey wins. Winning big (8-10+) would be nice.