Mass. Special election.

[Kilmer17]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...tion-1144.html

Holy crap.

Now I am CERTAIN that this poll is an outlier. And Im certain that Coakley is going to win.

But the fact that this state, for this seat, isnt a 30 point spread is AMAZING.

Could you imagine if the GOPer somehow pulls this off?

[twa]

Won't matter much since they plan to delay swearing him in if the Rep wins.
Can't beat the system

[Kilmer17]

Won't matter much since they plan to delay swearing him in if the Rep wins.
Can't beat the system

Liebermann said today he wouldnt vote for cloture if that happens.

[twa]

Liebermann said today he wouldnt vote for cloture if that happens.

They can always bribe someone else.

[mjah]

But the fact that this state, for this seat, isnt a 30 point spread is AMAZING.

According to three of the polls you linked there, that state for that seat IS in the ballpark of a 30 point spread.

Throwing out the obvious outlier, the average of the five remaining polls including Rasmussen yields a 23% advantage for the Democrat.

Could you imagine if the GOPer somehow pulls this off?

This is Massachusetts and the election is for a national office. Zero chance.

[twa]

Throw out the old polls and it is a different story though.

I wouldn't hold my breath though.

They are sending in Bill,so they must be worried
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...011002198.html

[Predicto]

I don't see why this is so unlikely. Mitt Romney is Republican. William Weld is Republican. Massachusetts will elect people from the GOP to high office. It just won't elect social conservatives.

[mjah]

WP did a story on the guy running. He is a social Liberal, Fiscal conservative (see Libertarian).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...011002198.html

Pretty amazing guy and family. Do not be so quick to say Zero chance.

Zero chance. Sorry man.

I wouldn't be surprised if the national GOP's halfhearted involvement in that election is because too few movers and shakers in the RNC want that kind of Republican in the Senate.

I don't see why this is so unlikely. Mitt Romney is Republican. William Weld is Republican. Massachusetts will elect people from the GOP to high office. It just won't elect social conservatives.

Massachusetts will elect people from the GOP to high state office. Not to high national office. The only Republican presidential candidates they've voted for since before WWII are Eisenhower and Reagan -- along with almost everyone else in the country. Their last Republican Senator was done in 1978. They're the largest state in the Union to have all-Democrat legislative representation, 10 Reps and 2 Sens. There's literally not a single Republican from MA anywhere in Congress, not even the dude representing the most conservative Cape areas.

Weld is as liberal as you can get without being kicked out of the GOP. When Clinton tapped him for his administration, Jesse Helms refused to hold the hearings and blocked the confirmation.

MA is a goofy place in a lot of ways, but there's zero chance they let Kennedy's seat go to a guy with an R next to his name. It just isn't going to happen.

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

I always turn to Nate Silver on polling questions. Unfortunately this seems confusing even for him:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/...tts-polls.html

Battle of the Massachusetts Polls

by Nate Silver @ 5:00 PM
1.10.2010

So, whom to believe?

The special election to replace Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts has become quite intriguing. And three pollsters with surveys out this week all have rather different takes on the race.

The Rasmussen poll shows the Democrat, Martha Coakley, up by 9 points. The Boston Globe poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire survey center, has her up by 15. But the PPP poll actually has Scott Brown up, by 1 point. All three polls are of likely voters.

In addition to these, there's also a rumor of a Boston Herald poll that shows Coakley up by just 1, a supposed leaked Republican internal poll that had Coakley up by 11, and some older polling (including one of likely voters) that showed Coakley up by margins ranging from 26 to 31 points. But we've already got our hands full with Globe, PPP, and Rasmussen, so let's focus on those for now.

All three polling firms in question have above-average track records. PPP and UNH have a history of the occasional big miss, although they usually get things right. Rasmussen tends to be a bit more consistent, although their polling has been a bit "different" since the 2010 cycle began -- they may turn out to be dead-on about 2010, but until we know for sure, I might apply a bit more skepticism to their results than I would ordinarily.

The PPP is more recent than the other two, although only by about 48 hours. Recency is nice, but unless there's a specific major event that drives changes in public opinion (not just general "momentum"), I tend to think it's a bit overstated. Plus, there's a downside to recency; half the PPP sample was conducted on Friday, a day that some pollsters like to avoid.

The PPP poll has a bit larger sample size than the other two; 774 respondents versus 554 and 500, respectively.

Rasmussen's partisan ID breakdown is a bit less plausible than the other two, although as the Globe poll makes clear, there's a big difference in Massachusetts between partisan registration and partisan identification, which makes this somewhat ambiguous.

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.

Globe/UNH is the local pollster, whereas Rasmussen and PPP are national ones. Rasmussen has nevertheless polled Massachusetts rather frequently before, although PPP hasn't.

Rasmussen and PPP use the IVR method -- a.k.a. "robopolls" -- whereas Globe/UNH uses live interviewers. But there's not really convincing evidence about whether IVR polls are inferior to regular ones. And in some recent elections, in fact, they've tended to outperform them. They do get lower response rates, however, which can at least potentially raise questions about response and self-selection bias.

* * *

Are you seeing a consistent pattern here? I'm not. All of the polls have positives and negatives. And any of them could be right.

The average of the three polls shows Coakley up by 8 points. As I've written before, I would probably take "over" on that 8 percent number. Fundamentally, this is still Massachusetts, and unless the Democratic candidate has some sort of fatal flaw (Coakley is a bit boring, but that's hardly an unpardonable sin), it's just going to be a really heavy lift for the turnout to be lopsided enough to allow the Republican to prevail.

At the same time, while I'm taking the "over" on that 8 percent, I'm also taking the over on variance. Special elections are notoriously hard to predict. And we also seem to be at some weird sort of inflection point in the electoral cycle. You can point toward some evidence to make the case that the bottom is really falling out from Democrats, and you can point toward other evidence which suggests that the whole tea-party backlash, while not unimportant, is really just operating at the margins. So, I acknowledge that there is a fairly tangible shot of Brown winning -- higher than the 3-5 percent I assigned to him after seeing the Rasmussen poll, but lower than the 15-25 percent chance I gave him before seeing the Boston Globe result.

This probably won't be a very satisfying answer to those of you who come to me looking for some kind of certitude. But part of being a good forecaster is knowing when to make a bold forecast and knowing when to proceed with more caution; the Massachusetts race calls for a heavy dose of the latter.

[twa]

Nate's a wimp

Brown picks up the Boston Herald endorsement
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opi...9&pos=breaking

running almost 9% 0n unemployed might make some look at bit closer at who they support

[MassSkinsFan]

WP did a story on the guy running. He is a social Liberal, Fiscal conservative (see Libertarian).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...011002198.html

Pretty amazing guy and family. Do not be so quick to say Zero chance.

We've voted for Republicans in Mass before, but mainly in the Governor role (to hold the Dems who run everything else at bay).

I won't vote for Coakley (can't stand her - she's a party line hack). Don't know if it'll be Brown or a write-in for my hometown guy Mike Capuano.

[boston skins fan]

Brown will win and wont be surprised if it is a land slide. Brown has all the republican votes, most of the independants will vote for him just so coakley doesnt win and even some dems are starting to sway over. Brown definatly has my vote.

[#98QBKiller]

Brown will win and wont be surprised if it is a land slide. Brown has all the republican votes, most of the independants will vote for him just so coakley doesnt win and even some dems are starting to sway over. Brown definatly has my vote.

Do you live in Mass or something?

J/K :P

[ACW]

Coakley sucks
So does Brown.

[SnyderShrugged]

Coakley sucks
So does Brown.

I never would have predicted that I'd support someone with the last name Kennedy for Teddy's former seat.