Nude Pictures, Youtube, American Idol and the Race to Replace Kennedy: Why Coakley May Lose this Race

Is the race to  replace Ted Kennedy really tightening, and if so, why? And what does it portend (if anything) for 2010?  I want to spend the next couple of posts addressing these questions.  Let me begin by noting several trends evident in this race that may foreshadow the 2010 midterms.

Consider the following:

1. Pressing the Flesh is a Dying Practice. When the latest poll results were released showing Brown and Coakley in a virtual dead heat, did they take to the pavement to meet and greet voters?  No.  Coakley went to Washington to line up some deep pockets to back her campaign, while Brown went on line and raised over a million dollars in campaign donations in 24 hours.  Increasingly candidates believe their time is better spent focusing on raising the money necessary to fund the air campaign and GOTV efforts, rather than spending time on a busy intersection asking voters for support.
   
2. All politics is NOT local. The fundraising efforts by both candidates is the latest reminder of Dickinson’s third law of politics – that no matter how much we try to reduce the influence of money on campaigns, it will always find its way to candidates.  And it is a stark reminder that the old Tip O’Neill aphorism – that all politics is local – is increasingly less relevant today.  The reality is that the combination of efforts to reduce the impact of big donors on elections through campaign regulations combined with technological advances has shifted the source of campaign funds and indirectly helped nationalize electoral races.  Increasingly, candidates look to find money outside of the district in which they are running.  In the latest indication of the impact of outside forces, Coakley has enlisted the help of MoveOn.org, a national left-wing organization.  In the NY 23^rd district special race, conservative groups weighed in on behalf of the independent candidate Doug Hoffman.
3. The myth of the small donor as common man. Brown’s supporters trumpeted the fact that his average campaign contribution in his last fundraising effort was less than $1,000, reminiscent of the Obama claim that the relatively smaller size of his campaign contributions indicated that he was able to mobilize the support of the “common man” – a voter who represents the moderate middle of the ideological spectrum and who previously stayed away from contributing to candidates. As my colleague Bert Johnson has shown, however, these small donors are in fact typically drawn from the more extreme wings of both parties and are usually party stalwarts who are very politically active.
4. The YouTube generation. Incidents that used to fly under the radar no longer do. The most recent illustration is this confrontation of a media person by one of Coakley’s staff.  The fact that Coakley has been asked about what appears to be a relatively innocuous event is a reminder that we live in a generation in which there is almost no privacy when it comes to political campaigns and almost any incident can be exploited for political gain.
5. We live in the celebrity era. Did you know Scott Brown once posed nude (well, almost) for Cosmopolitan magazine (he was attending BC law school at the time)?  Could Martha Coakley have done this without repercussions?  And that Brown’s daughter Ayla (who currently attends my alma mater Boston College) made a strong showing on American Idol?  That may explain why she has been prominently utilized in a recent radio ad rebutting Coakley’s attack ad against their father.

Fine, you say, but what do these observations tell us about who is going to win the election six days from now?  I wish I knew.  Marc Ambinder is tweeting that internal polling now shows Coakley’s lead down from 15% to 5%.  In my previous post I noted that Coakley was polling consistently at about 50%, which suggested she was close to enjoying majority support.  But Ambinder’s tweet made me go back and look at Coakley’s numbers.  Here’s what successive polls show regarding her support (most recent poll on top):

Massachusetts Senate – Special Election

Polling Data

Looked at chronologically, it appears that there has been a slight erosion in Coakley’s support, and a corresponding gain by Brown.  The difficulty in interpreting these polls, however, is that they do not always provide the same survey options and in some cases, as with Rasmussen, I can’t see the internal polling data, which means I can’t tell who responded to the survey. So I’m hesitant to say this is a clear indication that Brown is gaining.

Another way to interpret the data is to compare Coakley’s support among all voters versus her support with likely/very interested voters.  As the chart from Pollster.com below shows, among the latter she maxes out at about 47%.  This is just another reminder that turnout is crucial here, and the Coakley has not clinched the deal. If turnout is dominated by those who are committed voters, Brown is likely to benefit.

I confess that I don’t have a good read on my home state at this point.  I would not have predicted the race to be this close.  However, the polling data is consistent with the claim that the race is tightening although, as noted above, I can’t be sure of this because I can’t access the internals of all the polls.  In thinking about why the race might have tightened, however,  I remain convinced that Brown has capitalized on the Christmas day crotch bomber incident which has enabled him to portray Coakley as soft on terrorism. Coakley has tried to shift the debate to issues, such as abortion, that she feels will attract women’s support.  But there is a real risk in this strategy.  If we look back to the 2004 presidential campaign, Bush’s victory was primarily due to his ability to attract the support of “security moms” who typically voted Democratic, but who shifted to Republican because they thought Bush was stronger on security issues.  I wonder whether Coakley, in her focus on so-called women’s issues, is in danger of losing the security mom vote.  Brown, with 30 years in the National Guard, has successfully positioned himself as the homeland security candidate.   If he wins, we may view this race as a preview of the strategy Republicans will adopt in 2010.

This is a long way from over – more to come.