Riding a wave of opposition to Democratic health-care reform, GOP upstart Scott Brown is leading in the U.S. Senate race, raising the odds of a historic upset that would reverberate all the way to the White House, a new poll shows.
Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.
Brown gets 50 percent to Coakley's 46 percent in the race for the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy.
Brown leads Coakley by a margin of 50 percent to 46 percent, the Suffolk University/WHDH-TV poll found. It is the first poll to show Brown, who had been thought a long-shot underdog, leading the race.
It raises the possibility of an historic political upset in Massachusetts.
“It’s a massive change in the political landscape,” David Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center, told The Boston Herald.
Paleologos told the newspaper that the poll shows high numbers of independent voters turning out on election day, which benefits Brown, who has 65 percent of independents compared to Coakley’s 30 percent.
The reaction are varied, with one site pleading with people to "suck it up" and vote for Coakley so Brown doesn't win.
So suck it up and vote Coakley on Tuesday. If you stay home on Tuesday, and a smirking Jim DeMint puts his arm around Senator Brown next month, will you feel good about yourself? Will you take pride in your "message" when Tom Coburn assigns Scott Brown the task of maintaining the filibuster on any health care reform? When you see Scott Brown publicly wetting his pants over terrorists getting American justice, or the latest moron who fails in an inept plan to hurt our country, will you think "Yep, I'm the reason he's there to embarrass Massachusetts on the Senate floor."
FiveThirtyEight is finally admitting this seat is now a "Toss Up".
Those that refused to see the writing on the wall, weeks ago, when Brown started surging are admitting that they were wrong and Brown has a very good shot at taking the election.
I wrote a column last week in which I dismissed the chances of Republican Scott Brown actually winning next Tuesday's Senate special election in Massachusetts. The race would be close, I figured -- 53-47 for Coakley, or something like that -- but the state's blue tint would be just enough to save the Democrats.
I'd now like to qualify that prediction. Coakley's internal poll last night, I've been told, showed her barely ahead, 46 to 44 percent. The momentum clearly favors Brown, and one very smart Massachusetts Democrat I know told me this morning that "this may be too far gone to recover."
So I was wrong: Brown may actually win.
Seems that Democrats in Boston are a tad annoyed with how Coakley ran her campaign, hiding from the people, refusing to do debates and generally assuming that because she has a D next to her name, the people will automatically vote her in, no matter how badly she sucks.
Democrats are finally understanding that could have been their race to lose and are mobilizing, 4 days ahead of the election but Republican leadership also understands this and are sending their own teams out to help Scott Brown (where were they before when Brown was a massive underdog?), so the landscape is bound to become even more tense in the last days leading to the election.
GOP candidates across the country are rallying behind Republican Scott Brown’s long-shot bid in the Massachusetts Senate special election, flooding his campaign with cash, ground troops and moral support as the unexpectedly tight race enters its final days.
Some campaigns are blasting e-mails to supporters, prodding them to cut checks. Others are temporarily turning their headquarters into phone banks. A few are even encouraging volunteers to head to Massachusetts, where Brown faces Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley on Tuesday in a contest for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat.
[Update] New Pajamas Media/CrossTarget Poll has Brown up by 15 percent!
The Washington Times reports that Obama is staying away from this race after the painful losses in Virginia and New Jersey.
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