In the past two days two wildly differing polls have been released, one showing Scott Brown up 2, the other showing Elizabeth Warren up by 7. Polling from last week showed Warren ahead by 5.
AP via Boston Globe reports:
A new poll is giving an edge to Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren in the state’s volatile U.S. Senate race.
The Suffolk University and WHDH-TV poll released Tuesday shows Warren favored by 53 percent of likely general election voters compared with 46 percent for Brown. That’s outside the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.The survey of 600 likely Massachusetts general election voters was conducted Oct. 25-28.On Monday The Boston Globe released a poll showing Brown and Warren in a dead heat. That poll showed each candidate receiving the support of 47 percent of those polled, including voters who are undecided but said which candidate they are leaning toward. Among the poll’s likely voters Brown received 45 percent compared with 43 percent for Warren, well within the poll’s margin of error.
It could be that the Boston Globe poll showing Brown ahead is just an outlier, and Brown is in big trouble.
So how to figure out the reality? Here’s one possible clue.
The fourth and final debate scheduled for tonight was cancelled at the request of both candidates, although Brown was first. Now Warren wants to reschedule, and Brown says it’s not needed:
Senator Scott Brown said today that there was no need for a final debate with Elizabeth Warren, his Democratic opponent, while she said she would be willing to participate in a rescheduled match-up on Thursday night.Brown did not rule out rescheduling the debate, which had been slated for tonight, but made clear that he had little interest in doing so.
Hmmm. If the campaigns’ internal polling was as most of the public polls have indicated, with Warren solidly ahead, you would expect the opposite.
Warren’s campaign has been extremely cautious to date, so you would expect it to sit on the lead. Why risk a game changer at another debate? Conversely, if Brown’s internal polling told him he needed a Hail Mary pass, he should be demanding the final debate be rescheduled.
Warren is acting as if she needs the Hail Mary pass, while Brown is in a prevent defense.
Maybe the candidates are acting irrationally, or maybe they know something we don’t.
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