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There is no spin that makes the Suffolk poll good for Democrats.  Suffolk doesn’t suffer from major house effects, they have been a pretty good pollster in the past, and they include Joe Kennedy in their polling.  Their approval ratings for Obama (55% approve) and Palin (60% disapprove) are fairly accurate, although somewhat conservative leaning, but that is probably because of the enthusiasm gap.  This is very bad news for Coakley and for Democrats.  Unfortunately, nominating Coakley has cost us much.  We now have a competitive race in MASSACHUSETTS of all places, the DSCC is wasting money there that it should be spending in Missouri, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Nevada, and Republicans have a new campaign model for 2010.  It is a lose-lose for Democrats in Massachusetts now: either we lose Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, or we win just barely, wasting DSCC funds, and setting ourselves up for many 2010 losses.  2010 will be a terrible year for Democrats unless something dramatically changes.

A couple thoughts:

1) this poll does not mean that Democrats are hurting.  It is more a factor of Martha Coakley’s huge lack of favorability.  Obama is still polling at 55% in MA in that poll, so most of the votes against her aren’t anti-Obama or anti-Democrat.  She is a bad candidate, has never run in a competitive race before, won the primary by running the clock down, and is not a likeable person.  These factors result in her terrible poll numbers.

2) Scott Brown is bad news for Democrats regardless.  He has been able to raise $1,000,000 a day.  This shows the fighting spirit of conservative activists.  His campaign will be used as a model against us even if he loses.  Also, this race has proven that the “teabagger” smear isn’t as effective as Democrats had hoped.

3) Coakley’s political career is over.  If she loses, Democrats will never forgive her, and she will never run again.  If she wins, she will be vulnerable to a primary challenge in 2012, and may even choose to pull a Dodd, if public opinion of her doesn’t improve.

While other people who are much smarter than I am (e.g. Nate Silver) have done posts on this, I figure I’ll throw my own commentary out there, too.  As I’ve said before, the main thing between Scott Brown and the Senate seat is that Joe Kennedy is in the race.  They both have tea-party appeal, and Joe Kennedy steals from the furthest right elements of the base.  Nate Silver references the Joe Kennedy effect in his post, saying

“The Globe poll explicitly mentions the name of the third-party candidate, the libertarian Joe Kennedy, and gives him 5 percent of the vote. The Rasmussen poll does not mention him by name, but provides a choice for “some other candidate”, who gets 1 percent. And PPP does not provide for a third party option at all. You can make a case either way here; although Kennedy is participating in the debates and getting a bit more attention than usual, there’s also some history of polls overstating the margins that third-party candidates receive on Election Day.”

This Globe poll, by the way, is the one showing Coakley up by 15%.  I believe that it is the most accurate; as Joe Kennedy appears in this poll.  While many want to write him off, the fact is that his name is on the ballot.  And, it just so happens that his name is Kennedy.  And, he’s a tea party candidate.  These factors will combine to get him a small, but significant percentage of the anti-Coakley vote.  Scott Brown has a huge problem in that, while most Coakley voters are voting for her because of who she is, or because she’s a Democrat, etc., most of his voters are voting for him because he isn’t Martha Coakley.  Joe Kennedy stands to gain from this anti-Coakley sentiment at the polls; this is why he will take votes more from Brown than Coakley.  As such, the numbers will resemble those in the Globe poll.

Furthermore, the Rasmussen poll shows far too few Independents in its numbers, and the PPP poll shows Obama’s approval rating as below the national average.  These hint at a sample that does not represent the electorate.  The Globe poll appears to avoid these problems.

Just a quick guess on the final result: Coakley 52, Brown 41, Kennedy 7

Well, PPP released a poll showing Scott Brown ahead of Martha Coakley 48-47.  This is terrible news for Democrats.  This cannot be attributed to house effects, and it looks like Rasmussen was right.  Mea culpa.  However, this poll still has some issues, and Coakley will almost certainly still win

I do not doubt their polling numbers for Coakley.  Unfortunately, Coakley is a polarizing figure, and a lot of Democrats don’t like her.  Everyone else despises her.  She’s not a very good candidate, was only an OK AG, and only won the primary by running out the clock in a 4-way race against 3 others who hadn’t run statewide before.  That strategy won’t work in the general.  There is also the enthusiasm gap, as we saw in VA and NJ, which will hurt her more.

Then, why do I still think that she is almost guaranteed victory?  Simple.  While the lessons of VA and NJ are somewhat applicable  here, the race which this can best be compared to is NY-23.  This race is a 3-way race between a Democrat (Coakley), a Republican (Brown), and a tea party candidate (Joe Kennedy).  Current polling does not include Joe Kennedy, which is a major mistake, as he will be crucial to this race.  Many tea party members and other far right wing voters think that Scott Brown is too soft.  They prefer the hardline anti-government candidate Joe Kennedy.  While this is not a significant portion of MA voters, it is a significant enough amount of Brown’s base that Martha Coakley will still win.  The pollsters may be right.  She might just get 50% or less.  However, she will still win, in the same manner Bill Owens beat Doug Hoffman.  If it can be done in upstate New York, we can definitely do it in MA

The main reason Brown has support is not because people support him.  It is because people don’t like Coakley.  Many disillusioned Democrats and Independents will choose to vote for Joe Kennedy, who is on the ballot as an independent.  He also stands to gain from the fact that he shares his name with an incredibly popular former Congressman, who was a member of the actual Kennedy family.  These factors will cause a good portion of the protest vote to shift over to his side.  He will also get the vote of uninformed people who go in to vote, see that his name is Kennedy, and vote for him because of it.

Coakley will also pull in the big guns.  Bill Clinton will campaign for her, so will John Kerry.  More endorsements will trickle in, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Obama or Biden out here.  These will fire up the Democratic base, and get them to rally behind a mediocre candidate like Coakley.  However, despite these endorsements, there is one person alone who is the biggest threat to Scott Brown.  That person is Joe Kennedy.

There is huge news in Massachusetts, as a Rasmussen poll came out recently showing Martha Coakley leading 50-41.  This is much closer than anyone expected, and is firing up both sides.  However, this poll is complete BS.  Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has 2 good posts on Rasmussen, one related to the Massachusetts poll specifically, and the other on how Scott Rasmussen has been a partisan pollster, working for the RNC and W.’s reelection campaign.  As he says, “if you take Rasmussen’s 9-point margin and add 4-5 points to it, which has been roughly the magnitude of their house effect thus far this year, that would imply a 13-14 point win [for Coakley].”  He also looks at some of the fishy numbers in this poll, including the low number of independents, despite the fact that independents are 51% of registered voters in the Commonwealth, and the fact that Coakley is polling at 21% among independents, but at 24% among Republicans.  Take a look at both of these posts for more in-depth analysis; I will not continue quoting them, as there is a lot to digest.

I have one addition to his criticism of the poll: independent candidate Joe Kennedy (the usual caveat: no relation to THOSE Kennedys) is not included in this poll.  Normally, it is OK to not poll third-party candidates.  However, Joe Kennedy has gained prominence, appeared in many of the debates, and will ultimately get stupidity votes from people who just vote for the name.  Furthermore, he will split the anti-Coakley vote, as his views are similar to Scott Brown’s and he has more tea party cred.  These factors combined mean that, even if Coakley is only polling at 50%, she will still win by 10+ points.

One last caveat (not a criticism of Rasmussen this time, but merely an observation from the primary): Coakley did slightly better than her poll numbers in the primary, and will probably beat them again.  And, if it is actually this close, we can expect to see some high level Democrats out in Massachusetts to campaign for her.

As you may know, a person named Joseph L. Kennedy (no relation to the Kennedy family) is running as an independent libertarian in the upcoming Senate election.  I disagree with this immensely, as he is just trying to confuse people by making them think he’s THAT Joe Kennedy, which is incredibly disingenuous.  He is nothing like the other Kennedy, and is a far-right teabagger.  I sincerely hope that Coakley does get him included in the debates, as it will expose him for who he really is, and will hurt Scott Brown in the process.  Well, he has come out with a new lie recently.  According to the Boston Globe, “Kennedy says he voted in the last three presidential elections: for Al Gore in 2000, because he preferred his stance on the environment, for George W. Bush in 2004, because he did not want to oust a president in wartime, and for Bob Barr in 2008, because he is a Libertarian.”  However, this is a lie.  As his voting record will show, Kennedy did not vote in 2004 (see picture below).  I am not sure what he is doing here.  It seems like his best bet would be to make it seem that he didn’t vote for Bush, especially given that he is running to be John Kerry’s colleague in a state where Bush is despised.  Apparently, he thinks it will fire up the tea party base or something.  All I know is that this guy is loopier than Jack E. Robinson-a feat I never thought possible.

Joe Kennedy's Voting Record