… Mr. Markey now leads by margins ranging from 7 to 11 percentage points in a series of recent nonpartisan polls. With the vote to be held in just eight days, on June 25, Mr. Gomez’s chances for a victory are even slimmer than before. … Our fundamentals-based model, which [...] Read more »
Gomez: No tea for me, thanks
In the 2010 special US Senate election, enthusiasm from the nascent Tea Party movement helped propel Scott Brown past Martha Coakley. In the 2013 special election, the Tea Party is nowhere to be found, and Gabriel Gomez isn’t exactly turning over rocks looking for it. [cont.] MassINC Polling Read more »
Massachusetts: WBUR Poll Suggests Gomez Struggling To Catch Markey
With two weeks to go until the special Massachusetts U.S. Senate election, a new WBUR poll … suggests Republican Gabriel Gomez is struggling to chip away at Democrat Edward Markey’s small, but consistent lead. The survey, conducted after the first televised debate between the two candidates, shows Markey with a [...] Read more »
Republicans Must Manage Their Expectations in the Massachusetts Special Election
Aside from all of the controversies swirling around President Obama, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and the intelligence community, the top political question these days is whether Republicans really have a good shot at picking up a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts in the June 25 special election. [...] Read more »
Another Republican Senator in Massachusetts? Malarkey!
If Ted Kennedy were still alive and serving in Congress—which is to say, if Scott Brown had never stunned the political establishment by winning Kennedy’s Senate seat—this month’s special election in Massachusetts between longtime Democratic Congressman Ed Markey and Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez might not get much attention. … This [...] Read more »
Does Gomez Have a Real Chance in Massachusetts?
A common cognitive bias in political analysis is what Daniel Kahneman calls the availability heuristic: the tendency to focus on recent or familiar examples as opposed to the broader course of history and the richer volume of precedents. There is some risk of this in Massachusetts, where the Democrat Martha [...] Read more »
In Massachusetts, Kids Poll the Darndest Things
The first post-primary poll in next month’s Massachusetts Senate special election was released Thursday, but while the survey carried the name of a prominent Boston university, it wasn’t conducted by the school or its faculty. The automated poll was conducted by a newly-reinstated student group on campus. That didn’t stop [...] Read more »
Massachusetts residents approve of response to bombings, favor aggressive response to future crises
In the days after the arrest of the surviving Marathon bombing suspect, Massachusetts residents expressed a strongly positive impression of law enforcement and give their stamp of approve to the overall response to the attack. Ninety-one percent of respondents approved of the decision to lock down parts of the Greater [...] Read more »
MA Senate: Markey holds vulnerable lead as Gomez gives Sullivan run for his money
A new poll conducted by the Western New England University Polling Institute is concluding that while U.S. Senate hopeful and Congressman Edward Markey, D-Mass., is the special election front-runner he is perceived to be, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch may be the Democrat best positioned to defeat any of the Republican [...] Read more »
With Popularity Fading at Home, Is Jindal the New Romney?
Monday’s article on the nation’s least popular governors did not include Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, because he is not up for re-election in 2014. … But recent surveys suggest that Mr. Jindal has become very unpopular in his home state amid a series of battles on fiscal policy. … [...] Read more »