PPP gives its final pre-election poll: Brown 51% to Coakley at 46% -- a little too close to call but it shouldn't be !!!

The Obama Error is about to take a Right turn

Editor's comment: Public Policy Poll presents its final polling results. The fact that Scott Brown is within 5 points of Democrat Martha Coakley, much less polling ahead of the Democrat, is one of the more stunning political realities of the Obama error (trust me, I wrote what I meant to say). This election is already sending shock waves through the Democrat camp. No one is safe if the "Kennedy seat" in Massachusetts is not "safe." That is the cold hard fact, even before the vote counting begins late Tuesday evening. And this judgment is across the board. The pundits on CNN and MSNBC have all made remarks to this effect over the past weekend.

Keep in mind that this is a seat held by Democrats for 47 years, in a state that voted for Obama with a margin of 26 points - one of the larges majority votes of the presidential election past. If Coakley wins this election by a margin of less than 10 points, it will be interpreted as a solid defeat for the Dems. A narrow election, especially with Obama making campaign appearances over the course of Sunday and Monday, will mean that the Dems have lost their "super majority" in the strongly held states and cannot hold their own in states where political opinion is more evenly divided such as Virginia and New Jersey.

It has been determined that the acting Senator from Massachusetts, sitting in for Ted Kennedy until this election, will have no vote in the Senate after Tuesday. If Brown wins the Tuesday special election, the dynamics for getting a health care bill passed into law will become much more complicated. jds

Here is the Public Policy Polling results.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Massachusetts Senate Poll

Scott Brown leads Martha Coakley 51-46 in our final Massachusetts Senate poll, an advantage that is within the margin of error for the poll.

Over the last week Brown has continued his dominance with independents and increased his ability to win over Obama voters as Coakley's favorability numbers have declined into negative territory. At the same time Democratic leaning voters have started to take more interest in the election, a trend that if it continues in the final 36 hours of the campaign could put her over the finish line.

Here's what we found:

-Brown is up 64-32 with independents and is winning 20% of the vote from people who supported Barack Obama in 2008 while Coakley is getting just 4% of the McCain vote.

-Brown's voters continue to be much more enthusiastic than Coakley's. 80% of his say they're 'very excited' about voting Tuesday while only 60% of hers express that sentiment. But the likely electorate now reports having voted for Barack Obama by 19 points, up from 16 a week ago, and a much smaller drop from his 26 point victory in the state than was seen in Virginia.

-Those planning to turn out continue to be skeptical of the Democratic health care plan, saying they oppose it by a 48/40 margin.

-Coakley's favorability dropped from 50% to 44% after a week filled with perceived missteps. Brown's negatives went up a lot but his positives only actually went from 57% to 56%, an indication that attacks against him may have been most effective with voters already planning to support Coakley but ambivalent toward Brown.

-56% of voters in the state think Brown has made a strong case for why he should be elected while just 41% say the same of Coakley. Even among Coakley's supporters only 73% think she's made the argument for herself, while 94% of Brown's supporters think he has.

Full results here
.
.