With almost a year until the Massachusetts Senate election, this UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll is hardly a reliable predictor of the outcome. But the trend it shows is troubling for Republicans: Elizabeth Warren has gained 10 points in just the last two months. Sen. Scott Brown, a moderate, has already broken with Republicans on several occasions, and the added vulnerability could make him more likely to side with Democrats on contentious issues:
Warren leads Brown by a 49-42 percent margin, outside the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points. That number includes voters who say they are “leaning” for either candidate. But even without the “leaners,” Warren still leads by a 46-41 percent margin, barely within the margin of error.
The poll of 505 registered Massachusetts voters was conducted for UMass-Lowell by Princeton Survey Research from Dec. 1 – Dec. 6, and shows Warren with her largest lead yet in the campaign. A UMass-Lowell/Boston Herald poll taken in late September showed Brown ahead by a 41-38 percent margin, so the new poll represents a 10-point swing in Warren’s favor in less than two months.
Of course, Republicans can’t afford to lose Brown in the Senate, for both symbolic and practical reasons. But they may end up effectively losing him on certain issues if he’s forced to tack further to the left in the lead-up to the election.
According to the poll, the attack ads against both campaigns have had their desired effect. Brown’s negatives have increased, but so have Warren’s. A silver lining in the poll for Brown is that the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be increasingly unpopular in the state. Just 26 percent support the movement, while 34 percent oppose it. Warren has aligned herself so closely with OWS that it will certainly hurt her if that trend continues.
While this certainly isn't good news, I'm not hitting the panic button yet. Brown has been hit with a saturation campaign of sleazy negative ads for at least a year now, while he has been off doing his job. Ads showing him leaving oily foot and hand prints, or showing a sick child gasping for breath, supposedly because of Brown's vote against EPA overreach, are seen multiple times during Red Sox games, local news and popular shows. The barrage has picked up in the past few weeks, so it's not surprising that it's affecting the polls. n nBrown has done virtually no campaigning and has run no ads. American Crossroads ran one ad, for a few days, very effectively tying Warren to the Occupiers. n nThe poll may convince Brown that he needs to start fighting now, but it's not clear if it has much meaning a year from election day. If Newt's our nominee, he'll have negative coattails in MA, and Brown will be face a very serious situation.
Let's be honest: It was a miracle Brown won in the first place in MA.
All I see out here in satellite-TV rural western Mass is a really amateurish positive ad for Scott Brown more often than Elizabeth Warren's lovely bio ad, the one that does not call us hicks:) n nI do not vote here, but remember Scott Brown's terrific 2010 tv ads where he was standing in his kitchen. I do not understand why he changed his ads so much. He still has to introduce himself to Massachusetts for the general election in 2012. nThe online web attack ads are as @Dipsys_pal describes. n nThe national GOP really needs to 100% support Scott Brown. The DNC playbook for 2012 is to use Senate contests to drive voter turnout – it worked really well in 2010 New York when there was zero enthusiasm for Andrew Cuomo, downstate (south of Albany) suburban CD contests were going to drive voter turnout, so the NY Dems used Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand as the only face anyone saw, using "protecting women's reproductive rights" as her theme to drive up Manhattan's female voter turnout. n n n
Scott Brown needs to speak directly to Massachusetts voters again, instead of wasting money on the one ad he has been running. n nThe national GOP has to stop caving to the extreme. > Half of the Northeast is NOT liberal. nNo GOP presidential nominee will have any coattails in the NE, no enthusiasm for Romney at all. n n
Pack your bags pretty boy!
OK, this is a good example of the existence of alternative universes, because clearly people seem to have been living in a different one than I experienced in 2010. n nScott Brown only won the seat because even the squishy "moderates" in Taxachussetts were aghast at the way the Dems in Congress were trying to ram secret legislation down the nations' throat. Scott Brown became a lightning rod, a protest vote if you will for all those disaffected people who wanted to send a message to Dems in D.C. that they didn't like how the Dems were using their monopoly on the Federal Government. Scott Brown campaigned on the idea that he would go to D.C. and vote against Obamacare (which caused the nefarious Dems to pull outrageous tricks to rig a vote before he could be sworn in). The people in Massachusetts wanted a decisive break from the Obama policies. n nUnfortunately, Brown seems to have forgotten that mandate and has turned out to be another RINO or maybe, at best, RAT (Republican At Times). The conservatives and center-rights who voted Brown in have lost their faith in him and figure, why support someone who will behave like a Dem much of the time? But "smart" GOP consultants will always insist that conservatives can't get elected unless they moderate their stances, so Brown will lose a close one because he will not get the fervent support of conservatives and Massachusetts will get another loony Lefty that they deserve. n nAnd good riddance to Brown for being so wishy-washy. If you have principles, then stand by them no matter what. If you don't have principles, we don't want you in the first place.
Brown is going to face a severe intensity deficit. The right leaning voters who volunteered and contributed to his 2010 campaign look at his performance in office and see no reason to exert themselves to re-elect someone who has betrayed their confidence repeatedly. An often heard sentiment is "I'd just as soon be stabbed in the front by a Democrat as stabbed in the back by a RINO."