Scott Brown Leads Elizabeth Warren In New Massachusetts Poll

[onehandle]

WASHINGTON -- Two polls, two different results. A new public poll of Massachusetts voters released Thursday night shows Sen. Scott Brown with a statistically significant lead over Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, contradicting the results of a survey released earlier in the week that showed a much closer result and gave Warren a slight edge.

The new survey conducted by the Suffolk University Political Research Center for Boston television station WHDH (7News), from Feb. 11 to Feb. 15, gives Brown a 9 percentage point lead over Warren (49 percent to 40 percent) with 2 percent opting for another candidate and 9 percent undecided.

A second poll released on Tuesday, conducted by the Massachusetts think tank MassINC on behalf of Boston NPR station WBUR, gave Warren a three percentage point edge (46 percent to 43 percent) that was not large enough to be considered statistically significant.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/scott-brown-elizabeth-warren-poll_n_1282277.html

Money. Here. Now ---> http://elizabethwarren.com

[baldguy]

1. Can we dope slap everyone in Massachusetts?

A million of them anyway?

[RBInMaine]

32. Chill down friend. This is ONE poll. Could be inaccurate. It's VERY early. SEE ME BELOW FOR MORE.

[Swede Atlanta]

2. Me thinks..............

Brown's recent decision to support the Blount amendment will significantly impact him negatively. His attempts to clarify that if an employer used the Blount amendment to shield themselves from offering certain health care services and that was not related to a matter of religious conviction the company would be sued. Well that is exactly what the amendment does....it makes it legal for ANY employer to carve out procedures, benefits or it appears health care coverage all together solely on the basis of a professed religious or moral conviction. Federal law pre-empts state law in this area and as a result Massachusetts residents would have no legal recourse. Way to go Scotty boi.

[Kelvin Mace]

4. Also

Brown demonstrated that he had no clue what was in the law when asked about it. He denied the basic point of the law permitting people to deny health care coverage to anyone whose conduct they disapprove of.

[peace frog]

9. When Mass voters wake up to Brown's Blount blunder

his poll numbers will definitely be negatively impacted. He may have greater name recognition now but Elizabeth Warren is hot on his heels. She better reflects the values and goals of Mass voters and as her name recognition increases she wil rise in the polls.

[Yo_Mama]

3. I find this hard to believe

You can't place too much weight on polls.

I would not get too excited about it, and proposals to "dope-slap" the voters of MA are presumptuous and premature, surely?

[izquierdista]

5. You're right, why limit it to Massachusetts?

Pay particular attention to 2:30 "They don't care about you, at all, at all, at all!"

[TBF]

10. "It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it"

Carlin rocks. And he is 100% correct.

[kenfrequed]

6. Brown...

Well Brown be the recipient of a metric ton of Wallstreet money. But I seriously would put very little stock in any poll that has him ahead. I expect that he will start fading fast once people know where he stands and what the options are.

[kemah]

7. Name Recognition is the answer for the poll.

When the debates take place and more people are attuned to the election, you will see the better candidate win. Warren by far has the better message in a blue state like MA.

[Mass]

8. I welcome this poll. If we are lucky, it will be a wake up call from many dems

in and out of state that MA is not a liberal forum, but has a lot of independents that need to be won.

At this point, the Warren campaign's focus has been to speak to friends, democratic activists, democratic supporters who will campaign for her, and who will give her money: All important things in this race, particularly after Warren and Brown signed this agreement that prevents third party PACs from putting out ads showing Brown's negatives (there would already be a couple ads attacking Brown for supporting Blunt otherwise).

What is concerning both in the Massinc and Suffolk Poll is not so much the horse race numbers (way too early for that), but the favs/unfavs and internals in the Massinc poll that show she has not established herself as the middle class candidate (even though it is the only issue she has been campaigning on), while Brown stays very popular and seen as a moderate Republican.

There is no reason to start panicking (way too early), but it is important for her supporters to stop looking through pink lenses and to understand she must be present on the field, and talk to people that are not Democratic supporters. It is clear she will be the nominee. She has to be the winner and in a state where there are more than 50% independents, she must win the independents.

[Old and In the Way]

14. How does this work?

"after Warren and Brown signed this agreement that prevents third party PACs from putting out ads showing Brown's negatives "

Warren agreed to this? I have to assume Brown reciprocated, but, even so, does Warren really think Brown, the RNC, or the myriad SuperPAC $ will honor such an agreement...particularly as she starts to show a clear lead in this race? I hope she's prepared to also break this agreement when Brown does...because he most certainly will. I don't know how either Party can enforce this agreement when, by definition, these SuperPACs operate outside of the control of either candidate (in theory, anyways).

[Mass]

16. I should have said "both candidates's negative" .

The idea is that the candidate who benefits from the ad gives the other side an money equivalent to the media buy.

[Old and In the Way]

21. That makes more sense, but

I can see Republicans happily reneging on this agreement....so what if they end up having to pay for breaking the agreement? They could hold off and saturate the media markets at the last moment with negative, 3rd Party PAC money. Why would they care? Cost of doing business and money, as we all know, is something Republicans have plenty of. Integrity, honesty, and public service? Not so much.

[MBS]

23. " " " " " "n/t

[global1]

11. This Senate Seat Is Winnable For The Dems......

they have to focus national attention on this seat. It would be a dirty shame if they squander this opportunity.

I'm really suspect on these polls.

[Cleita]

12. Depends on where they poll.

I discovered that Gallup mostly polls Middle America. No wonder RW points win favor on most of them. I had always wondered as a West Coaster, why Gallup never polls me or anyone I know. I suspect that the Mass. polls are done selectively too, counties that perhaps voted for Brown in the last election.

[karynnj]

25. Not true

There are many reasons that polls can have built in bias, but no professionally done poll will simply poll only in certain areas. As to not knowing anyone polled, there are two explanations - one is simple mathematics. Most national polls have at most about 600 respondents. Consider how many polls of this size most be taken to cover even 1% of entire population. It should be rare to be polled. I am 61 and was polled just once. The other thing is that being polled is not all that exciting. It is possible that someone you know could have been polled and never mentioned it.

The reasons for built in bias is that even if they used the voter registration list - and it was too late to register, there would be the problem of non-response. That has risen greatly over the years. The assumption made - that the people in the multidimensional demographic group who are reached are the same as those not reached. A necessary and not all that bad an assumption when the non-response rate is low - a more troubling assumption when that rate becomes lower.

I would take Mass's comment at race value. She is from Massachusetts and has watched the polls over various elections and is clearly very knowledgeable in her comments. This may be a fluke, but the last poll that had her 3 ahead was down from the 7 ahead. You might want to follow the articles on Brown and Warren in the Massachusetts papers. This could be a blip because the Massachusetts papers all gave him full credit for the insider trading bill - and in fairness he and Gillibrand were the two who independently edited the House bill written by WA and NY Democrats. Their bills were referred to the Homeland Security committee where there were hearings and a combined bill - under the chair's name (Lieberman) was the bill that passed. To my knowledge - and I am NOT from Massachusetts no one in the MA media called him on his grandstanding and accosting the President to get Reid to take a vote on "his" bill. Brown may have come out as hard working, strong, principled etc - yet I would bet that is the behavior that likely leads to his peers labeling him a jerk.

What can be taken from BOTH of the last two polls is that Warren has yet to connect with the independents to the level needed. I think that the comment on the occupy movement was a self inflicted error - no matter how welcome it was here. There is no question that she is far more serious, principled, in line with Massachusetts than Brown. It is also likely true that Brown is the more natural politician - in some of the worst ways. Watch the video on the birth control amendment. He lied straight faced when called on its actual provisions. In addition, he is completely shameless in using the legacy of Ted Kennedy - here and at the groundbreaking of his building. (Note that Kerry, friend for 30 plus years and for whom Kennedy was a mentor, when asked after Kennedy's death if he would fill Teddy's role in the Senate. His answer - no one could, but that he would work hard for the same ideals.)

I think Warren needs to do a lot more to reach more people personally in Massachusetts and needs to be able to articulate what things she wants to do. I hope that she will be able to get some reluctant supporters who fear that that contest could mean the difference of McConnell or Reid. I hope that this poll is an aberration - taken at a Brown high and happening to pick up support on the high end.

[Cleita]

26. You are entitled to your opinion, but

not to saying what I said is not true. I am not the only person who thinks that this is what is going on.

[karynnj]

27. I worked for about 20 years primarily doing sampling forAT&T/Bell Labs

I never did political polling or opinion research, but many conferences that I attended covered those applications.

I did not say that there has never been a poll that was done to intentionally create a story, but the majority of polls are done by companies whose reputation is based on their ultimate accuracy.

[Cleita]

28. I thought so, that you were in that area of

endeavor. However, I think you are naive to think that a company wouldn't want to please a good paying client, particularly if the results they wanted were not so much for the accuracy but for the publicity value.

[RBInMaine]

31. Nice post. Here are some other important thoughts to note though:

First, early polling like this doesn't mean much. Next, that said, I would bet this was at least a bit of an abberation which can occur in polling. For example, here in Maine in November some polls had it as a close race in our referendum election to kill the new Republican anti-voting law. In the end, we won by 20 points. Why so close in two of the polls? Because the polling models and procedures were flawed. They over-polled more Republican leaning voters and under-polled lower income folks, students, less likely voters, and single women, many of whom do not have landlines. They also did not do well accounting for our side's superior turnout operation. Even in scientific polling models, some of them can produce inaccurate results. I'm willing to hazard that the poll showing Brown up so far was somewhat off base for similar reasons. It is hard to imagine that there was such a swing toward Brown in so short a time even with him getting some good recent press.

Now, Warren is campaigning ALL OVER the state and is drawing good crowds. But yes, it is always hard to beat an incumbent, and a lot of people are not yet paying attention and Brown still has more name recognition. And yes, to win she needs to get more indies. And yes, Brown is personable and likeable. All true. But so is Warren, and she is actually doing pretty well as a new campaigner. She aint no Martha Coakley. To win, she will need to relentlessly press her economic issues, and she will need to be willing to go on OFFENSE BIGTIME and attack Brown on all his Republican anti-job votes and also including his most recent vote in favor of the Blunt attack on women's reproductive rights. She must run the video of Brown asking David Koch for money a thousand times. She must DAMAGE the guy bigtime by creating a narrative that he is of, by, and for the right wing rich and privileged and not just this
"average guy who drives a truck". He will have more money, but she will have a lot of money too. She will have a good team, and women voters will flock to her bigtime. She will have a strong base of support and volunteers.

I think once she wins her primary and we get more into the spring, things will come into better focus. The Dems did well in MA in 2010 because they learned from the loss of Teddy's seat to Brown. These are new times, and Dems will be even more energized in Mass.

So, it is still early. Taking out Brown won't be easy. But it is very, very doable in a state where registered Dems outnumber R's 4-1. But it will only happen with the RIGHT campaign.

Yes, right now they need to ATTACK Brown on his vote in favor of Blunt's crazy bill. Then need to push this issue RELENTLESSLY. It will not bode well at all with women in MA, even with many R women there. If Warren can overwhelmingly energize and win the MA women's vote, she will most likely win that race especially if that women's vote crosses party lines and brings in tons of indie women and some R women.

[Iliyah]

13. PLUS this poll company is

considered one of the worst. Therefore, as usual I put more credence into PPP.

Hey now the goppers are starting to call her names, such a Bambi (how sexiest of them). Anywho, she will win.

[Mass]

15. Not for MA. They were spot on for the two 2010 races (Sen and Gov).

[jpak]

17. Stay at home Dems, stay at home in November

That'll show 'em

yup

[SaintPete]

20. oh whatever

the first bad poll for Warren and you blame Dems?

Maybe its a bad poll
Maybe it's a good poll, with anomalous results
Maybe Brown is a little stronger than we'd all like to believe
maybe any single poll is just a snapshot, and the best measure is to watch a trend of polling
Maybe a hundred different things that could have affected this poll

And maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge so harshly...

[graywarrior]

18. Last week she was 7 points ahead

So WTF. Don't believe anything til near election day.

[jwirr]

19. When did Massachusetts get that dumb?

[virtualobserver]

22. I don't know,but if Scott Brown wins, they'd better change their name to Dumbassachusetts

[0rganism]

24. if Dems can't even pick up this seat, i'm pretty sure we're losing the senate

sad, really. I thought we had a good chance at this one.

[CBHagman]

29. That's a big if...

...and nine months is a very long time indeed in politics.

So it all depends on how Warren campaigns, what decisions Brown makes between now and November, and a hundred other things.

I think Warren is in it to win it, but we shall see.

[RBInMaine]

33. For christ sake this on ONE poll in Feb. & could be flawed. Just chill out. It is very, very early.

[Fearless]

30. I can't wait to see the debates.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

34. I am not worried.....Warren will win

If she doesn't, I don't even want to think what Election Night will look like overall.

[Doctor_J]

35. If we can't win that one back, time to pull the plug

A perfect candidate in a blue state running for Ted Kennedy's seat against a fringe right-wing loser. If that one goes down, kiss the party and the country good-bye.

[BigDemVoter]

36. That cannot be right.

Massachusetts voters cannot be stupid enough to send stripper Scott Brown back to DC!! I have nothing against strippers per se. He just doesn't have much in the brains department other than the ability to remove clothing. . .