New Poll Shows A Dead Heat As Mass. Senate Race Approaches Conclusion

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 18 Jan 2010 - 1:00 PDT

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Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) and state Sen. Scott Brown (R) are statistically tied in their race for the U.S. Senate seat previously held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D), according to a Suffolk University poll, Roll Call reports. The survey polled likely voters from Monday to Wednesday, finding Brown with 50% of the vote and Coakley with 46%. However, with a 4.4 percentage point margin of error, the two candidates are in a statistical tie, according to the poll.

Third-party candidate Joseph Kennedy -- no relation to the late senator -- drew 3% of the vote, and 1% of voters said they remained undecided (Cadei, Roll Call, 1/15). A poll released by the Boston Globe last Sunday showed Coakley with a 15-point edge over Brown. The special election takes place Tuesday (Johnson, AP/Boston Globe, 1/15).

The Coakley campaign is hoping to mobilize the same female voters who helped her triumph in the Democratic primary. To that end, her campaign frequently mentions her support for abortion rights. Brown has professed his support for Roe v. Wade (Vick, Washington Post, 1/15). However, he also has earned an endorsement from an antiabortion-rights group.

According to NPR's "All Things Considered," the Coakley campaign emerged from the Democratic primary confident in a victory in the general election and then did not actively respond to Brown's early advertisements positioning himself as a moderate. While many people think Brown is "a moderate Republican -- maybe even a conservative Democrat" -- he is actually "an extremely conservative Republican, far to the right of anyone we've elected in this state," Democratic strategist Michael Goldman said (Brady-Myerov, "All Things Considered," NPR, 1/14).

Obama Releases Advertisement in Support of Coakley

President Obama appealed to Massachusetts members of Organizing for America, the group that emerged from his presidential campaign, to actively promote voter mobilization efforts for Coakley (Zeleny, "The Caucus," New York Times, 1/14). If elected, Brown has pledged to provide the 41st vote in the Senate that Republicans need to defeat Democrats' health reform efforts (AP/Boston Globe, 1/15). In the video message, Obama tells his supporters, "It's clear now that the outcome of these and other fights will probably rest on one vote in the United States Senate," adding, "That's why what happens Tuesday in Massachusetts is so important" ("The Caucus," New York Times, 1/14).

New York Times Considers Joseph Kennedy's Impact in Senate Race

The New York Times on Friday examined the impact third-party candidate Kennedy could have on the election's outcome. The Times writes that Kennedy is "not likely to get many votes" in the election but notes that his libertarian stances makes him "a wild card in the last days of the race: some [positions] could appeal to the right, like his call to abolish the federal Department of Education, while others could appeal to the left, like his call for immediately ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." If the vote tally is as close as some polls suggest, "Kennedy could play a key role by drawing just a few percentage points from either" Brown or Coakley, according to the Times (Cooper, New York Times, 1/15).

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