Polls and Such - And Turnout High

Old news, but I hear Hot Air is loading slow, so let me steal some stuff.

The weather isn't as bad as thought -- and turnout is high.

Which might favor Coakley... but I don't know...

[Democratic] outreach workers in and around Boston have been stunned by the number of Democrats and Obama supporters who are waving them off, saying they’ll vote for Scott Brown.

I predicted at least a 25% Democratic crossover -- and I may have to revise that.

Democrats have a 3:1 advantage over Republicans in Massachusett[e]s. If 25% of Democrats crossover, that reduces the advantage to 2.25 : 1.75 -- still a gap, but independents are breaking hard for Brown.

What will Democratic turnout be? Well, those voting for Brown will have higher turnout rates.

Democrats did not turn out much to save Corzine or that idiot in Virginia. Deeds. Whatever. So there is some hope there.

But, those races did not directly impact Obama or ObamaCare like this one does.

So I'd say it's in between -- we'll see Obama's troopers coming out in greater numbers than they did in NJ and VA, but we will still not see them turning out anywhere near the levels we'd see if Obama were on the ballot.

I still see the Democratic advantage narrowing, based on turnout, to something like 2.1 - 1.9.

Leaving the race in the hands of "unenrolled" (independent) voters, who are of course breaking for Brown by something like a 25-30 point margin. And they are, we're told, much more likely to vote than in the normal off-off-year election.

I still stick with my previous prediction. Higher turnout doesn't really help Coakley or Obama.

The high turnout will wind up putting an exclamation point on the election -- we didn't just steal this seat stealthily. Everyone voted, everyone knew the stakes, and we still won by a comfortable margin.

But still: Vote.

DSCC polling shows Brown up by 5.

Yes, the internal Coakley campaign poll numbers that have leaked out show a dead even race and perhaps a slight improvement over last week. However, there was more than one internal poll conducted by Democrats[.] A little birdie tells me that the final tracking survey conducted by the Mellman Group for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had Brown ahead by five points.

FWIW, Zogby comes in with a headline-grabbing prediction of a Coakley win -- by less than a point.

Worrisome -- so, like, vote and stuff.

Rep. Peter Wiener says ObamaCare is dead if Brown wins.

There is always the possibility that the House will pass the Senate bill unchanged -- and thus the Senate would not have to re-vote, and Brown could not join a filibuster. But Weiner says the Senate bill is too far from what the House liberals want to be passed into law without changes.

Another problem is the defy-the-will-of-the-people problem. Obviously this will be viewed as yet another cheap tactic to thwart the public's clearly-announced will. How many midnight votes and sneaky maneuvers do they dare?

Finally, if Brown wins, we might not even need Brown, as Landrieu, Nelson, Bayh, and the rest of supposedly "moderate" Democrats in red or reddish states may finally break from their party on this.

Oh, and if Brown wins, Obama vows he'll be a real friggin' crankypants about it.

President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say.

“This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”…

There won’t be any grand proclamation that “the era of Big Government is over” — the words President Bill Clinton uttered after Republicans won the Congress in the 1990s and he was forced to trim a once-ambitious agenda.

“The response will not be to do incremental things and try to salvage a few seats in the fall,” a presidential adviser said. “The best political route also happens to be the boldest rhetorical route, which is to go out and fight and let the chips fall where they may. We can say, ‘At least we fought for these things, and the Republicans said no.’”

At the link, read how Obama sees himself as the "underdog" against Brown.

Democrats are already blaming Coakley. Fair enough -- she does deserve a lot of blame. However, Democrats are kidding themselves if they think this uprising occurred simply because Coakley was an indifferent campaigner.

Can they imagine any other factor that keeps contributing to these losses?

posted by Ace at 01:13 PM

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