Democrats are freaking out and Republicans are doing the happy dance because Public Policy Polling has Democrat Ed Markey ahead of Republican Gabriel Gomez by only 4 points in the upcoming Massachusetts Senate election. Now, after the Martha Coakley/Scott Brown race, I'd never want to say a Republican can't win a race like this, but please read the PPP write-up to the end and note this huge caveat about poll respondents who haven't expressed a preference yet:
The pool of undecided voters ... 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.Er, yeah, I'll say.
What I think is going on here is that the right-leaning part of the electorate is paying a lot of attention to this race because right-wingers in America always pay more attention to politics than (most of) the rest of the population -- the right has successfully turned political ranting into mass entertainment that keeps the base engaged. So it'll take old-fashioned politicking to get Markey's voters focused -- but he's a veteran campaigner, and he's got the party behind him, so I still say it's his race to lose.
And no, I'm not impressed by this:
[Gomez is] up 47/31 with independents....I don't believe the majority of those independents are genuine independents -- as I say all the time, the rightest of right-wingers love to proclaim that they hate both parties, but they inevitably vote for the most right-wing candidate in every race (or at least the most right-wing candidate they think can win). For comparison, let's look at PPP's last poll before the Scott Brown/Elizabeth Warren race, conducted November 1 and 2, 2012 (PDF): the results among independents were Brown 58%, Warren 39%. Let's look at the exit polls: Brown beat Warren among independents 58%-41%.
Warren won the race, 54%-46%.
If it's a tight race, Markey can call on various Obamas, Bidens, Clintons, and Kennedys, among others, to campaign for him. Who's going to rally the troops for Gomez? Tagg Romney?
