Talk Elections

Elizabeth Warren 46%
Scott Brown 41%

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/03/warren-holds-small-lead-in-ma-senate-race.html

If I had to guess I would say that Brown keeps this much closer than Senate race should be, but Warren ends up winning by a couple percentage points.

Key finding: among voters undecided in the senate race, Obama leads Romney 66-15.

Yeah, there's just no way that I can realistically see Brown winning in November.

Nice. For whatever reason, there have been 2 or 3 polls in the past month that have shown Brown with a decent lead.

I just never believed that Brown could win again against a decent candidate like Warren.

in before krazen calls us all hacks.

Damn socialist!
How dare you defend Putrid Propaganda Polling?

Outlier, lol. Junk poll!

Database entry: https://uselectionatlas.org/POLLS/SENATE/2012/polls.php?action=indpoll&id=25120120318108

I say the 2012 Senate election is a mirror opposite of the 2010 special...52-47 Warren.

How is that? He won just a couple of years ago. And I don't watch this board as closely as lots of people do, but he's been leading every other poll I've seen lately? I'd say he's favored.

Given that Obama creamed McCain by about 20% amongst independents, you'd have to expect a very large Obama lead amongst the Indy-heavy undecideds. Ultimately, this race will be decided by Dem turnout, since Brown winning undeclared voters by a landslide is a pre-requisite for this race being even close.

This race is very much a toss up, to be decided by the campaign. Brown is fortunate to have a very engaged voting population.

Brown(R-MA) winning the 2010 MA US Senate Special Election was a good and bad.
The good thing is it gave MA Democrats a formidable candidate- Elizabeth  Warren.  Had Coakley(D-MA) won the 2010 MA US Senate Race- Obama-D administration will still be fighting to get Warren confirmed as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Some MA Republicans would be asking Brown-R to join the Republican field for the 2010 MA Governors Race-which included Charlie Baker-the eventual Republican nominee and Christy Mihos. The bad thing is had Scott Brown lost the DSCC would have one less US Senate Seat to worry about. The 2012 MA US Senate Race would be classified as a Solid Democratic. The Republican candidates to challenge US Senator Coakley would be either Charlie Baker or Jeff Perry.  DSCC would be just focused on helping Nelson(D-FL),McCaskill(D-MO),Tester(D-MT),Berkley(D-NV),Heinrich(D-NM),Kaine(D-VA),and Baldwin(D-WI).  Murphy(D-CT),Hirono(D-HI),Stabenow(D-MI),and Brown(D-OH) would be taken off the radar- since they would strongly favored to win.  Carmona(D-AZ),Donnelly(D-IN),Kerrey(D-NE),and Heitkamp(D-ND) would go from Strongly Republican Favored to Highly Competitive-Lean Republican.

Nice, but can we agree on the basic principle that of the two decent polls on this race recently, one has been Brown +5 and one Warren +5 so we should still be effectively treating it as a tossup?

Warren actually has a very good ground game, and though I'm not sure it's quite yet in the parts of the state that she needs to improve in (I'm thinking the Merrimack Valley here) that can be fairly easily remedied. Unless her strategy is to just drive turnout through the roof in ultra-Dem areas like rural western Massachusetts and the inner Boston suburbs, which could work but is somewhat riskier in conventional election strategy.

The 2012 MA US Senate Race based on the current 10 US Congressional Districts.
MA-1) Warren-D 54-45
MA-2) Brown-R 50-49
MA-3) Brown-R 50-49
MA-4) Warren-D 54-45
MA-5) Brown-R 50-49
MA-6) Brown-R 52-47
MA-7) Warren-D 55-44
MA-8) Warren-D 75-24
MA-9) Warren-D 50-49
MA-10) Brown-R 54-45

Except she's not. I live in Ohio, not Massachusetts, but Warren is one of the least attractive, over-all worst 'rising stars' in all of modern-day American politics. As a pretty solid Republican (who did vote for Strickland over Kasich in 2010), I could easily see myself voting for Andrew Cuomo, or Brian Schweitzer. Never Elizabeth Warren. Unfortunately Warren can't be counted out, but hopefully Brown wins.

I think I'd probably give the House up before seeing Warren anywhere close to major elective office.

All right...are you sure you think the same way voters in Massachusetts do? Are you sure your distaste for Warren is in any way objective rather than a function of your political positions and her political positions? If so, why would you be sure about these things?

Demographics tend to be more accurate than polls, especially this far out.

Absolutely not, I don't think any single place in the US has my combination of extremely hawkish, fiscally conservative, socially left-wing views. However, Warren holds almost the exact opposite of my views on foreign policy and economic policy, and she has a sort of 'I'm right, you're wrong, go away' aura I've always found very distasteful.

My distaste for Warren is subjective, and I think there's a very real chance voters in Massachusetts will elect her over Brown (though I really do think Brown is still favored -- PPP is good but not infallible).

Are you sure you're not talking about Jim DeMint?

Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of senators like that. Warren does sometimes come across that way but it's not as offensive to me, even compared to other people of her political ilk, because (and again, this too is entirely subjective) she seems to me more able to put things in comparatively graceful terms than most people with that sort of attitude.

I'm, shall we say, unconvinced that Brown is favored, since as realisticidealist pointed out demographics matter more than polling this far out, and it's hard to see how Brown replicates his 2010 performance in certain areas, but this is far from a done deal and there are certainly ways in which Warren needs to start campaigning better or more savvily if she is to win.

You are entitled to your opinion, but Warren is not going to win or lose based on what Republicans think of her, especially in MA.  She already knows she isn't getting those votes and she does not need them to win.

How is this a question of demographics? 

More like the basic partisan makeup of the state. It's also pretty obvious that Warren is a better candidate than Coakley (not that being worse is possible...) to the point of at least being able to run two points better.

Partisan demographics are demographics too.

Hasn't changed that much since 2009 has it? Or do you mean differences in turnout?

Presumably he's anticipating turnout in certain Democratic areas such as the Merrimack Valley and South Coast to be higher than it was in early 2010, which I think is reasonable.

In Massachusetts, Dem turnout in a presidential election should be > Dem turnout in a non-presidential election SB > Dem turnout in a special election which is what Brown won.  Expect 800,000+ more voters from predominately Democratic urban areas in 2012.  Obama's going to win MA by 20-25% and possibly more, the Dems are going to win all 10 CDs barring an unforeseen upset, and it's tough to see enough vote-splitting for Brown to win especially since Warren is a better candidate than Moakley from what I've seen so far.

Yep, Brown needs tons of ticket-splitting to win. Turnout in the special election was very high but he still got about the same absolute number of votes as McCain got a year earlier when he lost by a big margin to Obama. There aren't a lot of people who didn't vote for Brown in that election who are going to vote for him this time.