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 »