New poll: Coakley 'in freefall'
By: David Catanese
January 18, 2010 04:01 PM EST
A new InsiderAdvantage poll conducted exclusively for POLITICO shows Republican Scott Brown surging to a 9-point advantage over Martha Coakley a day before Massachusetts voters trek to the ballot box to choose a new senator.
According to the survey conducted Sunday evening, Brown leads the Democratic attorney general 52 percent to 43 percent.
"I actually think the bottom is falling out," said InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery, referring to Coakley's fall in the polls over the last ten days. "I think that this candidate is in freefall. Clearly this race is imploding for her."
The numbers show males and independents overwhelmingly breaking for Brown, who has married his GQ looks with a populist tone in a pick-up truck on the campaign trail.
Brown holds a 15-point lead among males and crushes Coakley by 41 points among self-described independents, a group that's been steadily inching away from the Democratic party over the last year due to growing apprehension with government spending, bailouts and health care reform.
"Men are not going to vote for Coakley at all. You have a very angry male voter who's repudiating whatever is being said in Washington and they're taking it out on this woman. And independents are clearly going to the Republican in droves. What's left are the Democratic voters," said Towery, who is a former aide to Newt Gingrich.
And the survey shows almost a quarter of Democratic voters lining up with Brown.
A DailyKos/Research 2000 poll released Monday painted a much tighter campaign, showing the race knotted at 48 percent each.
"We're about to learn whether Obama can deliver electoral votes," wrote DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas on his Twitter page.
But that three-day survey was conducted between Friday and Sunday, whereas the entire InsiderAdvantage phone survey of 804 likely registered voters was completed Sunday night.
Towery noted his polling indicates President Barack Obama's Sunday visit to the Bay State for Coakley won't be enough to pull her over the finish line.
"When there's a nine-point difference, it's awfully hard to shave off enough to win," Towery said. "The older voters are even tied. And the youngest voters have turned against the Democrats," he said, pointing to Brown's 61 to 30 percent lead among voters 18 to 29 years old. (Voters 65 and older, typically a key Democratic constituency, are divided between the two contenders, 48 percent a piece).
InsiderAdvantage's polling pool was made up of 20 percent Republicans and 43 percent of Democrats, though estimates show that independents make up just over 50 percent of all Massachusetts voters. "It'd be even worse for (Coakley) if we weighed it towards more independents," Towery said.
Other election eve polling is also tracking towards Brown. The Republican pollster, American Research Group, pins Brown's lead at 7 points, 52 to 45 percent, in a three-day survey released Monday. And Suffolk University's polling of three bellwether counties had them all breaking towards Brown by double-digit margins. Public Policy Polling's final survey put Brown up 51 to 46 percent, a lead that falls within the margin of error.
A third-party independent candidate Joe Kennedy, who some feared would confuse voters by siphoning votes through the power of his name, is now seen as less of a factor. He captures just 2 percent of support in the InsiderAdvantage poll.
"If this race were to tight up, he might make the difference," said Towery. "But this is a disaster (for Democrats)," he said.
The margin of error for the InsiderAdvantage poll is +/- 3.4 percent. About three percent registered no opinion. |
