SALON

Monday, Jan 18, 2010 11:55 PM UTC

In Coakley-Brown race, things look bad for Democrats

Democrats' Senate supermajority may be at its end after Massachusetts' special election, polls show

By

Topics: Martha Coakley, 2010 Elections, Scott Brown, War Room,

In Coakley-Brown race, things look bad for Democrats

Strictly speaking, anything could happen when Massachusetts voters go to the polls on Tuesday for a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Polls can, and will, be wrong — especially in the case of a special election, when the pollsters’ first task becomes figuring out a sample that gives something close to an accurate picture of the electorate that will actually vote. And in this race, given how improbable the idea that a Republican — a Republican! — could take over for the last of the great Kennedys once seemed, the notion that things could suddenly shift in Democrat Martha Coakley’s favor doesn’t seem so wild.

That said, though, looking at the race right now, it seems very likely that Republican Scott Brown will win. In doing so, he will cut the Senate Democratic Caucus down to 59 members, and he may well doom healthcare reform, at least for this year.

If nothing else, here’s what you need to know right now: FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver has spoken. And he, in his infinite, omniscient polling wisdom, sees a victory for Brown and the GOP. Brown is a 74 percent favorite to win the seat, according to Silver’s model.

“We have traditionally categorized races in which one side has between a 60 and 80 percent chance of winning as ‘leaning’ toward that candidate, and so that is how we categorize this race now: Lean GOP,” Silver writes of the race. And, to add insult to injury for the Democrats among his readership, Silver notes that his model “correctly predicted the outcome of all 35 Senate races in 2008.” (He does, however, observe that due to the fact this is a special election, “there is a higher-than-usual chance of large, correlated errors in the polling, such as were observed in NY-23 and the New Hampshire Democratic primary; the model hedges against this risk partially, but not completely.”)

Silver isn’t the only one who sees the race going in this direction. Stuart Rothenberg’s Rothenberg Political Report moved the race into its “Lean Takeover” — that is, Republican — category on Monday. And on Thursday, the Cook Political Report changed its classification of the election from “Lean Democrat” to “Toss Up.”

The reason for all this, and the pessimism coming from Democrats nationwide lately, is a series of polls that has come out recently showing a trend away from Coakley and towards Brown. As of this post, almost every single poll conducted on or since last Friday and included in Real Clear Politics’ roundup shows Brown with a lead. Only one, sponsored by Daily Kos, broke from the pack — and it just showed a tie.

One poll in particular got the most attention of any late Monday. Sponsored by Politico and conducted by InsiderAdvantage, it showed Brown with a pretty solid lead of nine percentage points, at 52 percent to Coakley’s 43 percent. (The margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.) But InsiderAdvantage is run by a former aide to Newt Gingrich, and that’s a fact the Democratic National Committee jumped on when it moved, hard, to try to counter the poll was doing to Coakley’s media coverage.

In an e-mail to reporters, with a subject line of “Don’t Buy This Skewed Poll,” DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse laid out his reasons to doubt the survey results:

  1. It was conducted in one night – which is notoriously unreliable
  2. It has a 20 percent Republican sample – which is 5-8 points more than most polls. Obviously skewing the sample more Republican than the electorate is – is going to skew the result in Brown’s favor.
  3. The poll was conducted, and the charged quotes in the article are attributed to, a former aide to NEWT GINGRICH – which Politico pointed in the 6th paragraph.
  4. Does anyone really believe – as this skewed poll shows – that Brown is going to win 77% of Hispanics and 26% of blacks? Those results alone should ring alarm bells about the accuracy of this poll.

Woodhouse’s first and last points undoubtedly had some validity to them, even if his second seemed lacking. (Part of Coakley’s problem is, after all, that Republican turnout seems like it’ll be higher than it might otherwise in Massachusetts, one of the bluest of states.) But given the general trend in polling for this race, it seems like it won’t be that easy for the DNC to get observers to write this particular survey off. More importantly, though she could of course still pull something out, it doesn’t seem like Coakely will be able to do much at this late date to prove the polls wrong.

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon. More Alex Koppelman.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 127 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
145 points146 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
122 points123 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
123 points124 points | 87 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
109 points110 points | 31 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
75 points76 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations