Martha Coakley's Concession Speech

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Sources: MSNBC

Brown Holds Slight Lead, 20% Early Reporting Indicates

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Brown Takes Early Lead In Mass. Senate Race


In a Massachusetts race with major national implications, Republican Scott Brown inched ahead of Democrat Martha Coakley on Tuesday in a down-to-the-wire U.S. Senate election that became a referendum on President Barack Obama's sweeping health care overhaul and his first year in office.

A loss — or even a narrow victory — by the once-favored Coakley for the seat that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy held for nearly half a century in this Democratic stronghold could signal big political problems for the president's party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

More immediately at stake was a critical 60th vote for Democrats to save their health care legislation and the rest of Obama's agenda. A 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate could allow the GOP to block the president's priorities with filibusters.

With 20 percent of votes reported, Brown opened a slight lead over Coakley.

Turnout was expected to be twice as heavy as the light 20 percent of voters who participated in the December party primaries, despite a mix of snow and rain showers across the state virtually all day.

The election transformed reliably Democratic Massachusetts into a battleground state. One day shy of the first anniversary of Obama's swearing-in, it played out amid a backdrop of animosity and resentment from voters over persistently high unemployment, industry bailouts, exploding federal budget deficits and partisan wrangling over health care.

Referendum on Obama?

Though he wasn't on the ballot, the president was on many voters' minds.

"I voted for Obama because I wanted change. ... I thought he'd bring it to us, but I just don't like the direction that he's heading," said John Triolo, 38, a registered independent who voted in Fitchburg.

He said his frustrations, including what he considered the too-quick pace of health care legislation, led him to vote for Brown.

But Robert Hickman, 55, of New Bedford, said he backed Coakley "to stay on the same page with the president."

Even before the first results were announced, administration officials were privately accusing Coakley of a poorly run campaign and playing down the notion that Obama or a toxic political landscape had much to do with the outcome.

Coakley's supporters, in turn, blamed that very environment, saying her lead dropped significantly after the Senate passed health care reform shortly before Christmas and after the Christmas Day attempted airliner bombing that Obama himself said showed a failure of his administration.

Fingerpointing began more than a week ago as polls started showing a tight race. Obama flew to Boston for last-minute personal campaigning on Sunday.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president "was both surprised and frustrated ... not pleased" at how competitive the race had become in the final weeks.

Wall Street watched race

Wall Street watched the election closely. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 116 points, and analysts attributed the increase to hopes the election would make it harder for Obama to make his changes to health care. That eased investor concerns that profits at companies such as insurers and drug makers would suffer.

Across Massachusetts, voters who had been bombarded with phone calls and dizzied with nonstop campaign commercials for Coakley and Brown gave a fitting turnout despite intermittent snow and rain statewide.

Secretary of State William Galvin, who discounted sporadic reports of voter irregularities throughout the day, predicted turnout ranging from 1.6 million to 2.2 million, 40 percent to 55 percent of registered voters. The Dec. 8 primary had a scant turnout of about 20 percent.

National issues including health care and the federal budget deficits were on voters' minds.

"We don't want health care just for the rich and the middle class. We need it for everyone," said Democrat Neicei Degan, 82, who voted for Coakley in hopes of saving Obama's plan that would extend coverage to millions of uninsured.

Fears about spending drove Karla Bunch, 49, to vote for Brown. "It's time for the country, for the taxpayers, to take back their money," she said.

For others, feelings about the candidates themselves shaped their votes.

Recalling that Brown once posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine, Kaitlin Addams, 50, said she reluctantly voted for Coakley "to make sure the pinup boy doesn't get into office. I don't like his stand on issues. He's an extreme conservative."

Conversely, Elizabeth Reddin, 65, voted for Brown because she said she was turned off by the Democrat's negative advertisements, saying: "The Coakley stuff was disgusting."

Workmanlike campaign

As polls opened, Brown drove up to his polling place in Wrentham in the green pickup truck that came to symbolize his upstart, workmanlike campaign that in the past week pulled him into a surprise dead heat in polls.

"It would make everybody the 41st senator, and it would bring fairness and discussion back to the equation," the state senator said of a potential victory. He spent the rest of the day out of public view, crafting evening rally remarks that had the potential to be an early State of the Union speech for the national Republican Party.

Coakley, stunned to see a double-digit lead evaporate in recent weeks, counted on labor unions and reawakened Democrats to turn out on her behalf and preserve a seat Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, held for over 50 years. The senator died in August of brain cancer.

"We're paying attention to the ground game," Coakley, the state's attorney general, said casting her vote in suburban Medford. "Every game has its own dynamics."



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Sources: AP, MSNBC, TPM, Google Maps

Massachusetts Exit Polls Closed! Now The Wait

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Polls Close In Competitive Massachusetts Senate Race



Polls have closed in the Massachusetts special election, an unexpectedly competitive contest that could have significant implications for President Obama's agenda in Washington.

Republican Scott Brown's late-in-the-game surge in the state has commanded the attention of the Democratic Party establishment, which dispatched top officials over the past week to try to keep the seat formerly held by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in Democratic hands. Democrat Martha Coakley, the state attorney general, was thought to be a shoo-in for the seat until Brown starting gaining rapidly in the polls.

Early returns were not available. But Rasmussen Reports released some data from its election night survey of 1,000 voters. The survey found Coakley had a slight edge, 47-to-41 percent, among those who decided how they would vote in the past few days. Rasmussen reported she had a "big advantage" among those who decided who to vote for more than a month ago.

Voter interest in the race for U.S. Senate seemed high throughout the day. With the state poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the balance of power in Washington, poll workers reported a steady stream of voters at the ballot box despite the snow.

Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin was predicting turnout could be as high as 50 percent.

The two candidates are far apart on the issues, but even in this heavily Democratic state Brown built an insurgent campaign that started resonating with voters at just the right time.

"This is going to be the most significant special election in modern American history if Scott Brown wins," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He predicted a Brown win would buoy every other "long-shot" Republican candidate in the country and add fuel to the party's momentum going into the midterms this fall.

More immediately, a Brown win would pose big problems for Obama's agenda items, not the least of which is health care reform. Brown, should he win, would break the Democrats' 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority, sending Democrats into a scramble to pass the health care bill before he arrives.

Though Republicans have occasionally been a political force in state politics, Massachusetts voters have not sent a Republican to represent them in the U.S. Senate since 1972. Every member of the state delegation currently in Washington is a Democrat.

Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-to-1 in the state -- 37 percent of registered voters are Democrats, 12 percent are Republicans and 51 percent are unaffiliated. Obama won the state by 26 percentage points in the 2008 presidential election.

Brown's campaign marked an upset just by being as competitive as it was against Coakley's.

The campaigns have been inundated with help from outside the state. Obama and former President Bill Clinton both came to campaign rallies for Coakley, and Obama appeared in a television ad.

"Every vote matters, every voice matters," Obama said in the ad. "We need you on Tuesday."

Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., pitched in by having his campaign team make phone calls to get people out to the polls. According to one Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staff member who stayed behind in Washington, it was all hands on deck in the Bay State.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee in Washington also has "emptied out the building" of staff to send nearly everyone to Massachusetts to help Brown get out the vote. The NRSC reportedly quietly shifted $500,000 to help Brown's campaign in the last two weeks.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, contacted his extensive and valuable fundraising lists on behalf of Brown last week. Independent tea party organizations are also offering phone banking support to Brown.

"I came up to help out because of the excitement, we have so many people turning up at our volunteer phone banks we have to turn them away," said one such Republican operative, "Stuff like this is why I got into politics."

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray noted that the race closed its 15-point gap in recent weeks because of the increased attention but Republicans have typically run close races in the state despite a 3-1 Democratic to Republican voter registration gap.

"You can't take any election for granted in Massachusetts, probably, or anywhere around the country these days," he said.

Indeed, the swift rise of Brown, a relatively low-profile Republican state senator, in his race against the state attorney general has spooked Democrats who had considered the seat one of their most reliable.

Kennedy, who died in August, held the post for 47 years.

Brown has tried to turn Democrats' expectation of an easy win to his advantage, proclaiming, "It's not the Kennedy seat, it's the people's seat."

A Suffolk University survey taken Saturday and Sunday showed Brown with double-digit leads in three communities the poll identified as bellwethers: Gardner, Fitchburg and Peabody. But internal statewide polls for both sides showed a dead heat.

A third candidate, Joseph L. Kennedy, a Libertarian running as an independent, said he's been bombarded with e-mails from Brown supporters urging him to drop out and endorse the Republican. Kennedy, who was polling in the single digits and is no relation to the late senator, said he's staying in.



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Sources: Fox News, MSNBC, Google Maps

Coakley's Excuse: Obama's Failure To Properly Confront Wall Street

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Coakley Pollster Defends Campaign Against White House



The Coakley failure "blame game" is fully underway.

A top pollster to Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley told HuffPost on Tuesday that the White House, in attempting to blame the Coakley campaign for a potential defeat today in Massachusetts, underestimates the wave of populist fury among Massachusetts voters.

Pollster Celinda Lake said Coakley was hampered by the failure of the White House and Congress to confront Wall Street. That failure, she said, means that Democrats are being blamed by angry independent voters worried about the state of the economy.

"If Scott Brown wins tonight he'll win because he became the change-oriented candidate. Voters are still voting for the change they voted for in 2008, but they want to see it. And right now they think they've got economic policies for Washington that are delivering more for banks than Main Street."

Asked about reported criticism from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Lake said she had seen the stories. "I think it's a circling squad to protect the White House. I don't think it's very useful," she said, mixing a metaphor while getting across a clear message.

Lake said that the problem for Democrats is that voters are blaming them for the nation's poor economic conditions. "2010 is fast turning out to be a blame election and I think that either we are going to characterize who deserves the blame - whether that's banks and lobbyists and people who still want to hold on to national Republican economic strategies - or we're going to get the blame. And that's a very different tone than, often, the administration is comfortable with," she said.

The feeling among voters, said Lake, is that Washington prioritizes Wall Street over Main Street and that, despite Coakley's credentials as a state attorney general who has taken on and beaten Wall Street banks, sending her to Washington would not make a difference. "On the eve of the election, Martha Coakley had a 21-point advantage over Scott Brown on who would fight Wall Street and deliver for Main Street.

But it didn't predict to the vote, because voters thought, even if they sent her down here that it wouldn't happen. 'Fine, she had done it in Massachusetts, but no one was doing it in Washington,'" Lake said. "Voters are voting for change and we have to go back to that change message. And we have to deliver on change, especially an economic policy that serves working people."

Lake pointed to polling released by the Economic Policy Institute showing that 65 percent of Americans though the stimulus served banks interests, 56 percent thought it served corporations and only ten percent that it benefited them. "That is a formula for failure for the Democrats. We have to deliver on economic policies that take on Wall Street and we have to do it for five months, not just five days. We really have to deliver on the policies," she said.

The tit-for-tat over tactics, said Lake, risks missing the wave that is headed toward Democrats. "There's a lot of blame to go around, but the point of the matter is there's a wave. And that wave: it hit Virginia; it hit New Jersey; it hit Massachusetts," she said.

Lake also said that electing a woman statewide in Massachusetts is a difficult project. "People aren't processing [that] Massachusetts is an incredibly difficult state to elect a woman in. And Massachusetts is not that Democratic a state in behavior," she said, citing its choice of a number of statewide elected Republicans, including former Governor Mitt Romney.

But if party leaders wanted to point fingers, they should remember that they made tactical mistakes, too, she said. Lake argued that the underfunded campaign didn't have money for tracking polls, and so didn't see Republican Scott Brown's comeback until it was well underway. The campaign also didn't have money, she said, for television ads that could have shaped a populist message and defined her opponent as a friend of Wall Street. The party establishment didn't back the campaign with significant resources until the closing days of the campaign.

"I think [the criticism from Emanuel] ignores -- there were a lot of mistakes made all the way around, but number one, we had no tracking data. Number two, we said to the campaign, we have to get up [with ads on TV] earlier. Number three, in the primary, when we had money, we ran a populist economic message," she said. "And number four, we had no money and there may be lots of critiques about that, but we should remember that there were [Democratic] institutions" that could have kicked in campaign cash.

"I think everyone was too secure in how Democratic Massachusetts was and missed the fact that the angry voters are the ones turning out," she said. "We should've been up earlier and, you know, there were a lot of people in the campaign saying we should've been up earlier, but we didn't have the money to be up earlier."

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee eventually dumped more than a million dollars into the campaign, but only in the last few days.

A DSCC spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Michael Dimock, associate director with The Pew Research Center, said he's seen the movement that Lake's referring to in his organization's polling. "People are really bummed about what's going on economically...Obama and the Democrats own what's going on," he said. "Independents, almost by definition, they're not driven by ideology, they're effected by current circumstances and right now current circumstances suck. We're stuck in two wars; the economy's terrible; Washington looks like a train wreck more than ever before."

Lake said that in the end, the race was going to be close even if perfectly run. "I think this was going to be a close race no matter what, honestly. Maybe we could have pulled it out, because we could have gotten Scott Brown defined earlier and we would have had money for tracking, which we didn't have," she said. "But I think this wave was coming."

If nothing changes, she said, the wave will continue wiping out Democrats. "We're either going to get buried by the wave or we're going to ride it. And we're running out of time to ride it. Somebody is going to get the blame for what's happening right now to the American public. They're incredibly angry and incredibly frustrated. And somebody's going to get credit for trying to turn it around. And right now, we're getting the blame and we're not getting the credit and that formula has to change," she said.

Independents, said Lake, are breaking 2-1 and 3-1 away from Democrats, largely because of the economy. "Independents are actually the voters most hard-hit by the economy. They're the voters most troubled by the state of the economy."

While candidate Obama split the independent vote in Virginia and won it outright in New Jersey back in 2008, independent voters broke strongly in favor of their respective Republican candidates for governor this past November, according to exit polls. Although Virginia and New Jersey voters said they remained generally supportive of President Obama two months ago, most said that wasn't the decisive factor.

In Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds lost independents, he lost hard on the economy, and ultimately he lost by a wide margin, 59 to 41. Voters who declared themselves "very" concerned about the economy sided with the Republican winner, Bob McDonnell, more than 3 to 1, according to exit polls. Among voters who said the economy was the single most important question for them, McDonnell led Deeds by 15 points.

Proving the decisive factor in a 49-to-45 contest, New Jersey independents also sided with the Republican candidate -- in their case, then-Attorney General Chris Christie -- over the Democrat, incumbent Gov. John Corzine. Exit polls showed that Corzine, a former chairman and co-CEO of Goldman Sachs, actually held the advantage over Christie on the economy, but he lost 2 to 1 among independents and 67 to 25 among "change" voters, making the difference in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 700,000 voters.

At the time, the White House was quick to stress that the gubernatorial races were not referenda on Obama's first year in office. But the President's economic track record certainly didn't help.

A month before the November 2009 elections, according to aggregate polling data collected by Pollster, a plurality of Americans disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy for the first time since his inauguration. Since then, those numbers have only gotten worse; now, an outright majority disapproves of the President's economic results, and independents take an even dimmer view of his actions on the economy.

A Quinnipiac poll conducted from Jan. 5 to 11 reports that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy, compared to 41 percent who approve; independents disapprove, 61 to 34, and 52 percent of them said Obama is not spending enough time on the economy, versus 38 percent who said he's giving it the right amount of attention. Independents, like Americans generally, still overwhelmingly blame George W. Bush for the nation's current economic problems, according to the Q poll, but they don't think Obama is turning things around.

Another recent representative poll, conducted by CNN from Jan. 8 to 10, reports 54-to-44 disapproval of Obama's handling of the economy, with 47 percent of respondents naming it as the most important issue facing the country today -- trending back upward after losing ground to health care in the summer and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the fall.

Traditionally, Democrats hold a heavy advantage over Republicans when voters are asked who they trust to handle the economy. Not so today. "When six times more people think that the banks benefited from the stimulus than working families, you've got a problem. And it's not just a problem with what Martha Coakley did in her campaign," said Lake.



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Sources: Huffington Post, Politico, MSNBC, Economic Policy Institute, Google Maps

Brown, Coakley Legal Teams Ready To Do Battle

GOP, Dem Party Legal Teams At The Ready In Massachusetts



As the battle for the Massachusetts Senate race comes down to the wire, both sides are racing to put legal teams in place in case of a too-close-to-call finish — or a Republican victory that doesn’t result in a quick seating of the new senator.

“A group is being put in place, and we are prepared,” one GOP attorney familiar with the party’s legal effort said Tuesday. “We are prepared, and we are ready.”

Daniel Winslow, a partner at the Boston firm Duane Morris who is heading up Republican Scott Brown’s legal team, and Sean Cairncross, an attorney for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, are leading the GOP legal effort.

Also helping out is Phillip Swain, a partner at the Boston law firm Foley Hoag, and Christopher Jantzen, a partner with the Boston firm Jantzen & Associates.

POLITICO has also learned that Marc Elias, a partner at the Washington firm Perkins Coie who served as Al Franken’s lead attorney during the prolonged recount battle after the 2008 election, has arrived in Massachusetts to head up the Democratic legal team.

“If this is too close to call on election night, we’ll have a team in place to deal with any irregularities,” one Democratic source said.

Both sides are keeping a close eye on the polls. Republicans say they have over 200 volunteer poll watchers, while Democrats say they have more than 100 attorneys on the ground at various polling locations throughout the state.

Republicans also have expressed concerns about when Brown, if elected, would be allowed to be seated.

While Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said last week that certifying a winner could take more than two weeks, GOP attorneys are pointing out privately that Rep. Niki Tsongas was sworn into office within days of winning an October 2007 special election.

Galvin has said he would not allow politics to delay the certification process, telling Boston ABC affiliate WCVB this week that, "I am going to do everything that I can to give the winner, whoever that winner is, the credentials they need as soon as possible."

"My reputation precedes me. I'm not going to sacrifice my reputation for any race of any kind," Galvin told the station.


Sources: Politico

MSNBC Pundits Encourage Dems To Commit Voter Fraud!

Ed Shultz Advocates Voter Fraud.





Chris Matthews Misses The Days Of Vote Buying.






Apocalypse Now For Liberal Talkers


For the pundits on MSNBC and the liberal blogosphere, the prospect of a Scott Brown victory in the Massachusetts Senate race has provoked the kind of doomsday rhetoric not heard since a certain Texan was president.

Liberal talker Ed Schultz recently told radio listeners that if he lived in Massachusetts he’d try to vote 10 times, claiming that he’d “cheat to keep these bastards out.”

Conservatives howled that the MSNBC host was inciting voter fraud, so Schultz apologized on the air Monday — well, sort of.

“I misspoke on Friday. I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Schultz said. “I meant to say, if I could vote 20 times, that's what I'd do.”

“Let me be very clear,” Schultz said a few minutes later. “I'm not advocating voter fraud, I'm just telling you what I would do. That's how bad I want Scott Brown to lose!”

Atlantic senior editor Andrew Sullivan described the election on his blog as “a nihilist moment, built from a nihilist strategy in order to regain power ... to do nothing but wage war against enemies at home and abroad.”

Sullivan, a longtime conservative who announced he was leaving “the right” last month, concluded Monday on his blog that “Democrats can stop hoping at this point” and predicted a double-digit victory for Brown.

“What comes next will be a real test for [President Barack] Obama,” Sullivan continued. “I suspect serious health insurance reform is over for yet another generation.”

Other pundits have had their own grand pronouncements on the possibility of Democrat Martha Coakley losing the seat once held by Ted Kennedy: “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos —who once worked for someone dubbed the “Comeback Kid” — wrote on his blog Tuesday that a Brown victory “would certainly be the biggest political upset I have seen in my career.” PBS’s Judy Woodruff, quoting someone from the White House, described the situation on ABC’s “This Week” as “a tragedy of Greek proportions if Ted Kennedy's successor is the one ... who was responsible for the death of health care.”

The imminent “death of health care” has been a constant theme. For Democrats — who’ll continue to control the White House, House, and Senate, with at worst 59 seats — there’s been a steady stream of doom and gloom when talking to the press.

Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts told reporters Friday that a Brown victory would “kill the health bill,” and his House colleague New York Rep. Anthony Weiner expressed a similarly dire view on Tuesday’s “Morning Joe.”

"I think you can make a pretty good argument that health care might be dead,” Weiner said.

But while Weiner focused his criticism on what President Barack Obama could have been doing in states like Massachusetts before this weekend to promote his health care agenda, along with the repercussions of losing a seat in the Senate, MSNBC’s prime-time liberal hosts have been turning up the volume in attacks on the Republican candidate.

On Monday’s “Countdown,” Keith Olbermann told viewers that in Brown, “we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”

“The Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Olbermann added in his special comment, “is close to sending this bad joke to the Senate of the United States.”

Following Olbermann was Rachel Maddow, who played a 2008 clip that’s been making the rounds in which Brown suggests that Obama may have been born out of wedlock.

“Massachusetts, meet Scott Brown,” Maddow said Monday. “He could be taking his claim that President Obama was secretly born to an unwed mother all the way to Washington, D.C. in your name as your senator.”

Maddow, who’s hosting her show from Boston on Tuesday, said that she understands “all the election withdrawal hyperventilation over the prospects of an Obama conspiracy theorist-red state Republican-in-blue-Massachusetts [but] there’s still an election to be fought for here.”

Chris Matthews on Tuesday said that Democrats were facing a “disaster in their works,” and expressed the view that it was better in the old days when the party leadership would have made sure Democratic voters got to the polls.

"You get them lunch; you get them a car,” Matthews said.“You’d make sure they got there, and in some cases you’d be buying people to get them, not officially buying them, but getting them there as block secretaries, as block captains; you’d be getting them there with street money — legitimate but it’s a little bit old school."


Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Youtube

Jon Stewart Mocks Mass. U.S. Senate Race; Too Funny!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Mass Backwards
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Sources: Comedy Central, The Daily Show, Huffington Post

High Voter Turnout In Mass. U.S. Senate Race; Braving Snow, Ice

Mass. Voters Stream To Polls In Special US Senate Election


Voters flooded the polls to cast ballots in the unexpectedly close election to succeed the late Edward M. Kennedy in the US Senate.

Light snow has not discouraged heavy traffic at polling places as more than 55,000 people cast ballots by noon in Boston, an early turnout more than double that of the primary last month. Other cities and towns experienced similar waves of voters. Lines formed at a polling place in Somerville, and traffic backed up at Bates Elementary School in Wellesley, with cars spilling onto Elmwood Road. In two Quincy precincts at the Lodge of Elks, nearly 1,000 people -- or about 25 percent of voters -- cast ballots by 1 p.m.

"I'm trying to save the nation today," said Robert Cappello, 69, a registered Republican and enthusiastic Scott Brown voter from South Boston who reveled in what he described as an "overwhelming sweep" of momentum for his candidate.

"This election is a lot about sending a message," Cappello said in an excited voice outside a polling place on H Street. "It's telling Washington to slow down."

In West Roxbury at St. George Orthodox Church, Phil DiCarlo cast his ballot for Democrat Martha Coakley but noted how quickly the Brown campaign gathered steam.

"It seems like people have short memories," DiCarlo said. "They forgot about the last eight years" under former president George Bush.

Brown, a Republican state senator from Wrentham, has surged more than 30 points in the polls in a special election for the US Senate seat Democrats have held for generations. Brown has vowed to be the crucial 41st Republican vote blocking President Obama’s health care legislation in the Senate.

Coakley, the state attorney general, was the early front runner after her decisive victory in the Democratic primary last month. She supports the health care overhaul and stood with Obama in Boston this weekend at a rally for her campaign.

An independent candidate, Joseph L. Kennedy of Dedham -- no relation to the late senator -- also appears on today’s ballot.

At the Lodge of Elks in Quincy, Ruth Faherty, a 25-year-old nurse, cast her ballot for Brown. "I think we need him in there to make more of a fight in the senate," said Faherty, who described herself as an unenrolled voter. "I think if there are too many on one side [of the aisle] it becomes lopsided."

In Stoughton at Gibbons Elementary School, a steady stream of voters slogged through the cold and snow. Many said they cast ballots for Brown, citing his common appeal and objections to President Obama's health care overhaul.

"They took everything for granted in this race," said unenrolled voter Richard Whittington, 48, of Democrats. "It's the same arrogance you see in Washington.''

In Natick, the persistent flow of voters included Rex Kidd, 48, the owner of a local masonry and paving company who voted for Brown because of his pro-business, conservative views.

"I respect Martha Coakley and what she's accomplished in her career. But I think she's going to preserve the status quo," Kidd said. "Scott Brown can take us to the next level … [Brown] is going to decrease my taxes and get rid of all the wasteful spending that Deval Patrick has done. Cutting taxes fuels the economy, not charging more taxes and spending it on social programs."





Outside Natick High School, Randy Divinski took a vacation day from his job at a non-profit to clutch a Coakley sign in 30-degree weather.

"I am bothered by stealth Republicans who run as moderate," said Divinski, 46. "Brown has a political record, but that is not what he's running on," said Divinski. "We've just had eight years of screwball economic policies, and he wants to go back to that? One Herbert Hoover is enough."

In Jamaica Plain at Kennedy Elementary school, more than 100 people -- or about 10 percent of voters -- had cast ballots by 11 a.m. That number equaled roughly the entire turnout for the primary last month. Like most of the others interviewed in this left-leaning precinct, Sasha Cantu, 21, said she voted for Martha Coakley.

“I don’t want Brown because he didn’t want to help rape victims,” Cantu said. “She’ll do everything Teddy Kennedy wanted to do.”

In South Boston, Patrick Shaughnessy, 33, cast his vote for Brown because of Coakley's "entitlement attitude."

"She didn't really campaign. She wouldn't debate him one-on-one," said Shaughnessy, an unenrolled voter who supported Republican Senator John McCain in 2008. "She just expected to win."

Another unenrolled voter, Jackie Crowell, 26, also voted for Brown. "I think my views align a lot better with his than Martha Coakley's," Crowell said.

Maureen Downs, 51, came to the opposite conclusion and cast her vote for Coakley.

"I don't agree with Scott Brown's positions on anything," said Downs, citing economic regulations, emergency contraception, and more.

Her husband, Eddie Downs, 50, added: "I just don't think he would be good for the working man and woman of the Commonwealth."

Democrats are hoping a coordinated get-out-the-vote effort for Coakley will hold off the surging Republican. Brown's campaign is hoping the raw energy among his supporters is enough to overpower the state’s Democratic machinery.

The cold, cloudy weather could be a challenge for the candidates. Intermittent light snow showers – and some rain – are expected throughout the day and into the early evening.
Polls remain open until 8 p.m.

To read profiles of the candidates and a rundown of where they stand on the issues, click here for Brown; here for Coakley; and here for Kennedy. To find out where to vote, click here.







Massachusetts Vote Could Affect Obama Agenda


Voters across Massachusetts braved winter cold and snow Tuesday to decide who will inherit the U.S. Senate seat controlled by the Kennedy family since 1953.

At stake was President Obama's domestic agenda, including the overhaul of health care.

If GOP state Sen. Scott Brown upsets Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley, Republicans would strip Democrats of their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Republicans would have enough votes to block future Senate votes on a broad range of White House priorities.

Election turnout is expected to be "pretty good," said Brian McNiff, a spokesman for the office of Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin.

Galvin predicted Monday as many 2.2 million of 4.5 million registered voters would vote -- at least double the turnout from December's primary.

"I don't think weather is going to impede too many people" from coming out to vote, McNiff said. "I think the interest in this election will trump any bad weather."

More than 100,000 absentee ballots have been requested, he added.

Coakley initially was expected to win the race easily to replace Sen. Ted Kennedy, known as the "liberal lion" of the Senate who made health care reform the centerpiece of his nearly 47-year Senate career. Kennedy, 77, died of brain cancer in August.

Former Kennedy aide and longtime friend Paul Kirk was appointed to the seat on an interim basis after the senator's death.

Until recently, Brown was underfunded and unknown statewide. No Republican has won a U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts since 1972. Democrats control the governorship, both houses of the state Legislature and the entire congressional delegation.

The latest poll, however, shows Brown leading Coakley by 7 percentage points, 52 percent to 45 percent. The American Research Group survey, taken Friday through Sunday, had a sampling error of 4 percentage points.

No poll released in the past few days has shown Coakley ahead.

Obama and former President Clinton hit the campaign trail over the past three days in an attempt to save Coakley's campaign, which observers said has been hampered by complacency and missteps.

Obama crushed Sen. John McCain in Massachusetts in 2008, beating the GOP presidential nominee by 26 percentage points.

"If you were fired up in the last election, I need you more fired up in this election," Obama urged a crowd Sunday at a Coakley campaign rally.

Vicki Kennedy, the late senator's widow, called on Democrats to turn out to save her husband's legacy.

"We need your help. We need your support. We need you to get out there and vote on Tuesday," Kennedy said. "We need you to bring your neighbors. We need you to bring your friends."

Brown, who has trumpeted his 30 years of service in the National Guard, hewed to traditional GOP themes at the end of the campaign. He promised at a rally Sunday that, if elected, he would back tax cuts and be tougher on terrorists than Coakley.

He also repeated a pledge to oppose Obama's health care overhaul effort.

"Massachusetts wants real reform and not this trillion-dollar Obama health care that is being forced on the American people," he said. "As the 41st [Republican] senator, I will make sure that we do it better."

Forty-four percent of Massachusetts voters cited the economy and jobs as their top concern in a recent 7 News/Suffolk University poll. Thirty-eight percent mentioned health care as their top concern.

Voters more concerned with the economy were split almost evenly between the two candidates; voters more worried about health care narrowly supported Coakley.

Democrats far outnumber Republicans in Massachusetts, but there are more independents than Democrats and Republicans combined.

Democratic sources said Obama advisers have told the party they believe Coakley is going to lose. The sources said they still hoped Obama's weekend visit to the state, coupled with a late push by party activists, could tip the balance in her favor.

Facing the possibility of Coakley's defeat, Democrats were trying to figure out if they could pass health care legislation without that crucial 60th Senate vote.

But top White House aides publicly insisted they are not engaging in any talk of contingency plans because they believe Coakley will come out on top Tuesday.

Galvin, a Democrat, said last week that certifying Tuesday's election results could take more than two weeks -- potentially enough time to allow congressional Democrats to pass a final health care bill before Brown would be seated should he win.

But Democratic sources said this is unlikely.

Two Democratic sources in close contact with the White House said Monday they've urged the Obama administration, in the event of a Brown victory, to push House Democrats to pass the Senate's health care bill as currently written. Doing so would prevent the Senate from having to take up the plan again.

"I think the Senate bill clearly is better than nothing," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said Tuesday.

A third option would be for Democrats to revisit the idea of trying to push health care through the Senate with 51 votes -- a simple majority.

But to do so, Democrats would have to use a process known as reconciliation, which presents technical and procedural issues that would delay the process for a long time. A number of Democrats are eager to put the health care debate behind them and move on to economic issues such as job creation as soon as possible this election year.

Senate Democrats also could try again to get moderate GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine to vote for a compromise health care plan. Multiple Democratic sources, however, have said they believe such a scenario is unlikely.



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Coakley Failed To Reach Many Female Voters; Left Standing Cold

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Coakley's Stunning Gender Gap


As women’s groups make a last-ditch bid to help Martha Coakley win the Massachusetts Senate seat, they face a tough problem: The candidate leaves too many female voters cold. Plus, read an on-the-ground account from rival Scott Brown’s rallies.

If Martha Coakley loses Tuesday in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, Democrats and progressives across the country will be devastated. But perhaps no group will be quite so disappointed as establishment feminists, who threw their weight behind the Massachusetts attorney general early on, when she faced a crowded primary field, and then watched, stunned, as Coakley’s lead disintegrated in the heavily Democratic state and her opponent, the previously unheard-of state senator Scott Brown, became a cause célèbre for disgruntled conservatives across the country.

Even as women’s organizations focus on getting voters to the polls today—asking hundreds of thousands of their members across the country to phone-bank for Coakley from home—some are looking back at the race with regret, wishing their own organizations had realized, earlier on, the threat of the Tea Party movement rallying to Brown’s side, or the extent of voter disenchantment with President Barack Obama’s health-care bill.

“I don’t think we saw this coming. … The mounting army coming from the Republican Party and all the Tea Party protesters. Maybe we could have forecasted that a little better,” says Lauren Martin, spokesperson for the Women’s Campaign Forum, a nonpartisan PAC that donates money to pro-choice female candidates. The group supported Coakley in both her primary and general-election races, but gave more during the primary, reflecting the conventional wisdom until just two weeks ago: that in liberal Massachusetts, Democratic primaries are where national races are won or lost.

“I’ve lived in Massachusetts my whole life,” says Christina Knowles, director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization for Women. “It’s a shock.”

What’s even more shocking is how little enthusiasm Coakley’s campaign seems to have generated among the women of Massachusetts. According to several recent polls, female voters, who tend to be more liberal, are barely more likely than male voters to favor Coakley over Brown; one poll shows Coakley behind by four points among women, another has the candidates tied for the female vote.

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One outlier poll, conducted for liberal blog The Daily Kos, reports Coakley enjoys 13 percent more female support than Brown. But strategists would expect the gender gap to be safely large in a typical election, with far more women than men supporting the Democratic candidate. When Ted Kennedy ran for re-election the final time, in 2006, 72 percent of women supported his bid.

Coakley did not go out of her way, especially during the general-election campaign, to play up her feminist credentials. She never filmed a general-election ad that presented a positive image of herself as a defender of reproductive rights and civil liberties, as opposed to just attacking Brown on those issues. She also never fully embraced the message that her ascension to the Senate would be historic, putting the number of women serving in the upper chamber at 18, an all-time high. She has called her gender “secondary,” eschewing the more emotional feminist appeal that Hillary Clinton made in the final months of her presidential campaign.

That left women’s organizations making the activist case for Coakley without much media backup. “Martha’s a really great candidate for everything that NOW stands for,” says Knowles, of Massachusetts NOW. “She’s been a true champion of reproductive rights. She’s been a huge supporter of LGBT rights and gay marriage, and that’s something our members are very, very strong supporters of.”

It’s not as though Coakley didn’t have a strong progressive record to run on. She is the only state attorney general to have sued the federal government, alleging that the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional and discriminatory toward gay people. In a special election where getting the base to the polls is key, you’d think this would be a part of Coakley’s record she would boast about. Instead, she ran ads on prosecuting Internet sexual predators and supporting small business owners. She played it safe.

But it’s also true that Coakley’s campaign and women’s groups—some of her biggest champions—were slow to read the shifting mood of the country, and pick up on the fact that she might be in trouble. There have been signs since early summer that health-care reform was reigniting the culture wars, with abortion rights firmly at the center of the debate. In July, Rep. Bart Stupak, a conservative Democrat from Michigan, assembled a group of pro-life Democrats who vowed to vote “no” on any health bill that included coverage of abortion services, either publicly or privately financed. To the shock of pro-choice advocates, who had taken a less confrontational lobbying approach, Stupak’s ploy was largely successful in shifting the proposed legislation right.

Of course, the renewed vitriol over abortion presents a risk for pro-choice candidates in the form of energized challengers like Scott Brown—but it also offers an opportunity. The White House and Congress’s general capitulation to antiabortion Democrats has angered many liberals, and the vast majority of Massachusetts voters are pro-choice. During the primary, Coakley took a major risk by saying she would oppose any version of health reform that rolled back reproductive rights. She later backtracked, perhaps realizing that after numerous legislative delays, she would likely soon be in the position of having to vote on the actual bill.

But then, in an effort to drive values voters to the polls, Brown began touting his endorsement from Massachusetts Citizens for Life. Abortion was back in the spotlight. Last week, Coakley pressed Brown on his reproductive-rights record, attacking him in a debate, direct-mail appeal, and television advertisement for supporting a 2005 bill in the state legislature that would have allowed hospitals to deny emergency contraception to rape victims. She also called attention to Brown’s sponsorship of a “Women’s Right to Know” bill that would have enforced a 24-hour waiting period and required women to view ultrasound photographs before an abortion.

It may have been too little, too late. Still, despite the scary poll numbers, feminist groups continue to defend Coakley and her campaign, and said Monday that they believe she will prevail. Those who criticize Coakley as a lethargic candidate—as I did, in a recent column—“are living in a Disney movie where if she ran a good campaign, it would win,” says Terry O’Neill, president of NOW. “That’s not the real world. You have some people who are powerfully filled with hate and anger because they are unhappy with the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.”



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Brown, Coakley Cast Their Ballots On Special Election Day

G.O.P. candidate Scott Brown talks with reporters as he goes to cast his vote on Special Election day in Mass.




Democrat candidate Martha Coakley on Special Election day in Mass.





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Too Late For Dems Finger Pointing: Coakley, Obama Too Arrogant

Finger-Pointing Begins For Democratic Insiders


As voters head to the polls in Massachusetts, nervous Democrats have already begun to blame one another for putting at risk the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held for more than 40 years.

Many angry Democrats blame their candidate, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, for running a sluggish campaign that let Republican Scott Brown set the contours of the race.

Some Democratic strategists lay the fault at the feet of President Barack Obama, saying he should have done more to sell the party’s agenda.

And in private conversations, Hill sources say White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has blamed Coakley, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake for failing to see Brown’s surge in time to stop it.

“With the legislative and political stakes so high, it’s unbelievable that the Senate committee and White House let this race get so out of hand,” said one senior Washington Democrat. “There’s a lot of blame to go around. Martha Coakley is only one of the problems here.”

Coakley is at the center of the criticism. Democrats complain that her campaign was caught napping after last month’s primary — and that Brown was able to use the pause to shape the race.

“A malaise set in, and there was a failure to take advantage of the opportunity to define yourself the next day” after the primary, said longtime Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.). “You thank people for the primary and then begin to define the next six weeks.”

Added Neal: “Going dark was not a great idea.”

Although DSCC Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) was still predicting victory Monday, even he conceded that it would have been “better” if Coakley had laid out the differences between the candidates earlier. He said Democrats have learned a crucial lesson: that even in very blue states, Democrats should expect a “volatile” environment with a “tough” electorate — and “you can’t afford not to be aggressive.”

“You have to define your opponent before they define themselves,” Menendez said. “In Brown’s case, he’s working hard to try to disguise himself.”

Menendez learned that the race was tightening about a week and a half ago, when independent pollsters returned results showing the race much tighter than Democratic polls had been portraying. He acted quickly — unleashing more than $2.5 million into the race, including $1.4 million in television ads in the past week alone, according to sources familiar with the effort.

The DSCC also dispatched senior staff to take tighter control of the Coakley campaign, bolster her get-out-the-vote efforts, improve her fundraising and enhance coordination between the White House and the campaign. As a result, the tone of her ads and her stump speech were sharpened in an attempt to define Brown in the minds of the voters as a far-right Republican out of touch with the state’s mainstream voters.

“Look, we’re never in place of a campaign; a candidate has to run their own race,” Menendez told POLITICO. “When the alarm bells went off, we sprung into action.”

Emanuel has told his confidants that those bells rang too late — and that both Menendez and Lake, who declined to be interviewed, should have been moving sooner.

But the White House itself is facing a barrage of criticism among Democrats, with many saying that Obama has let the GOP frame the issues — particularly health care — in the minds of many independent voters, including those who elected Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey in the fall.

“We lost independents in Virginia, we lost independents in New Jersey and we’re losing independents in Massachusetts,” said one Democratic campaign strategist. “The only thing those three states have in common is Obama.”

The Democratic National Committee, which spent at least $750,000 almost exclusively on get-out-the-vote efforts, has also faced criticism for not dispatching its resources early enough.

Democrats recognize the difficulty any candidate would have had, given the political headwinds blowing against the party at the moment. Still, they argue that the race was still very much winnable and that a veteran pol such as Rep. Michael Capuano — who was trounced by Coakley in the primary — would not have let Brown define the race.

Instead, they complain that Coakley effectively ceded to her opponent the day-to-day news coverage — what political pros call “earned media” — by not taking him seriously enough until it was too late.

Coakley was so confident, noted one fuming Democrat, that she even stopped the critical task of identifying supporters on the phone following the primary — the very foundation on which she should have structured her turnout operation.

Brown, a little-known Republican state senator, used the opening to cultivate a regular-guy image, most vividly rendered in what became the campaign’s defining ad — that of the candidate driving around Massachusetts in his well-worn GMC truck.

And while Brown, who is actually an attorney and is married to a local news broadcaster, was defining his just-folks persona, Coakley was committing a series of gaffes that made her seem politically out of touch or at least tone-deaf.

Asked about why she was not spending more time with voters, Coakley jabbed at Brown for having greeted hockey fans who attended a special outdoor game between the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers.

“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?” she said.

Such one-on-one interaction with voters is the lifeblood of this state’s politics, and mocking the idea of braving the cold at Boston’s iconic baseball stadium seemed bizarre given the tens of thousands of voters who did just that to see the game.

“She had a humanity deficit as a cold campaigner, but they didn’t try to warm her up — or, instead, define the race about big issues — and instead ended up with a referendum on likability,” said one Massachusetts Democratic veteran.

J.B. Poersch, executive director of the DSCC, acknowledged that Democrats didn’t do enough to portray Coakley as an “independent voice” for Massachusetts. That allowed Brown to grab the “change” mantle — and to appeal to voters upset over the direction of the country.

“We just didn’t use the primary to set her up as a change agent enough,” Poersch said.

But Poersch strongly defended the committee’s efforts, saying “we, more than anybody, represented the difference in spending.”

“We were the principal funders of her field program,” Poersch said. “And my political director was side by side with her campaign manager” doing voter turnout.

Party officials say Monday’s debate and some subsequent Coakley gaffes may have done her in.

When moderator David Gergen asked Brown about the “Kennedy seat,” the Republican shot back that it was actually “the people’s seat.” The line became a populist rallying cry for both Brown and his supporters.

Coakley, meanwhile, hurt herself at the debate by suggesting that there were not currently any terrorists in Afghanistan.

More missteps followed, each of which amplified her weaknesses: leaving the state to attend a lobbyist-packed Washington fundraiser — which became a Brown ad; suggesting Catholics with strong views on contraception shouldn’t work in emergency rooms; appearing not to know that former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling was, in fact, a player for the Red Sox.

A candidate who was not a part of the Beacon Hill boys club, had no ties to Washington and had little in the way of a relationship with the Kennedys somehow managed to be cast as the ultimate insider.

“Massachusetts isn’t insulated from the anti-incumbent sentiment nationwide, but this was a race that a competent candidate would have won without panic or palpitations,” said a Massachusetts Democratic hand.



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America Watches Massachusetts U.S. Senate Race...Decision 2010

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Five Things To Watch In Massachusetts



The stakes for Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts couldn’t be higher. At play: the Democrats’ 60-seat supermajority — and, potentially, the fate of President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform legislation.

But as Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown head into the rare mid-January race, just who will show up at the polls remains something of a mystery.

“Conventional wisdom is, the high turnout favors the Democrat. But in a special election, high turnout is volatile because you don’t know who’s showing up,” said Scott Ferson, a Democratic strategist in the state.

Making the vote even tougher to predict: the weather. Tuesday’s forecast calls for a mix of snow and rain, with temperatures in the low 30s.

To make some sense of the early returns, POLITICO put together a guide of five things to watch as the results come in, after polls close at 8 p.m.

1.) Look at the South Shore

It’s no coincidence that Brown’s campaign imagery has highlighted his Everyman appeal. An early ad showed him riding his pickup truck across the state, he’s spent time campaigning in the cold outside Fenway Park, and his “People’s Tour” rally featured New England sports heroes such as Red Sox great Curt Schilling and former Boston College football star Doug Flutie.

There couldn’t be a greater contrast with Coakley, who often has exuded an entitled image on the campaign trail, no more clearly illustrated than when she expressed her preference, in an interview with the Boston Globe, for meeting with party leaders instead of glad-handing supporters. (A telling statistic: Brown has made 66 campaign stops since the primary, while Coakley has made only 19, as of Sunday.)

Her apparent confusion about Schilling — in a radio interview, she mistakenly said he was a Yankees fan — only fueled voters’ perception of her as out of touch.

Brown’s narrative has clearly hit a chord with working-class voters, who normally vote Democratic but sound receptive to the Republican’s message in a state where Democrats control all facets of government and the economy is sputtering.

Even though organized labor has lined up behind Coakley’s campaign, a Suffolk University poll conducted last week showed Brown leading Coakley 53 percent to 45 percent among voters in union households. The big test for Brown is whether he can hold onto the blue-collar crowd and mobilize them to the polls.

In a late play for this demographic, Coakley’s campaign and its allies launched an attack portraying Brown as a Wall Street Republican for opposing Obama’s proposed tax on large banks. The Coakley campaign also scrambled to put out a TV ad one day before the election showing her politicking with union members at an American Legion hall.

To get a sense of whether Brown is winning the working-class vote, look no further than early returns from the heavily Democratic Irish Catholic South Shore, where Obama suffered significant drop-offs from John Kerry’s vote in 2004. Brown needs to carry the towns of Braintree and Weymouth, two Democratic strongholds that Obama barely held in 2008.

If Brown wins 55 percent in neighboring Quincy, which Obama carried by 18 points (58 percent to 40 percent), it would be devastating to the Coakley campaign.


2.) Watch for signs of life from the Democratic machine

Brown has campaigned on a message of taking on the state’s entrenched Democratic majority, but it’s that very machine that is crucial to Coakley’s ability to win.

That get-out-the-vote effort will be centered in Boston and the academic hub of Cambridge, the liberal base of the state, which needs to come out strongly for Coakley to prevail. Obama’s last-minute rally for Coakley in Boston was a recognition that the campaign needs to re-energize his 2008 coalition, particularly getting young, African-American and Hispanic voters to the polls.

In Boston, her biggest ally is longtime Mayor Thomas Menino, whose urban political machine is legendary and helped him comfortably win reelection last year, despite opposing Democratic challengers running on a Brown-like message of change.

But last month’s Democratic primary results suggest she can’t automatically assume enthusiastic support: Even though Coakley won most municipalities across the state, Rep. Michael Capuano outpolled her in Boston and Cambridge.

“I think turnout in the Boston area is crucial,” said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

Coakley also needs proportionally higher turnout in the Democratic-leaning cities of Springfield and Worcester, where party get-out-the-vote efforts have also been concentrated. In 2008, Obama won 77 percent of the vote in Springfield and 68 percent of the vote in Worcester.

Coakley needs around 35 percent turnout in those core areas, analysts estimate, with about a 50,000-to-60,000-vote margin in Boston and a 15,000-to-20,000-vote margin in Cambridge. One plugged-in Massachusetts Democratic strategist said he’s hoping for 40 percent turnout in the cities to feel good about Coakley’s chances — enough to offset what he expects to be a strong Brown performance in the suburbs.

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3.) The I-495 suburbs

The last Republican to win statewide office in Massachusetts, former Gov. Mitt Romney, outlined the winning strategy for the GOP in a solidly Democratic state: Rack up big margins of victory in the outer Boston suburban towns, particularly those along the I-495 ring.

This part of the state is among the most Republican (at least by Massachusetts standards) and is home to many voters who are new to the region and the state. Voters here are resistant to high taxes — anti-tax referendums poll well here — and Obama’s health care plan is most likely viewed unfavorably as well.

Brown needs to win at least 55 percent of the vote in this area, particularly in high-growth places like Marlborough, Taunton and Haverhill — three towns that Romney carried by double digits in 2002 but Obama won in 2008. He’ll also need to rack up double-digit margins of victory in his home base around Wrentham and Foxborough.

David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, said his most recent data showed Brown expanding his lead in the crucial suburban bellwethers of Gardner, Fitchburg and Peabody — a sign, he said, that the race was “opening up.”

“Brown could have a 10-point lead here,” said Paleologos.





4.) The female vote

Since the beginning of her campaign, Coakley has targeted female voters as part of her call to break the glass ceiling in the male-dominated political culture of Massachusetts. If she wins, Coakley would become the first female senator in the state’s history.

The latest Public Policy Polling survey shows a significant gender gap: Coakley leads among women by 4 points, 50 percent to 46 percent, and Brown dominates among men, 56 percent to 41 percent.

But recent history suggests that women can make the difference in a close race. Obama carried male voters in the 2008 presidential primary, according to exit polling, but Hillary Clinton prevailed, thanks to an electorate that was 58 percent female.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party, keenly aware of the need to rally women to Coakley’s side, launched a blistering attack over the weekend, alleging that Brown wanted to turn away rape victims from hospitals.

If those tactics effectively rally women to the polls, it’s a good sign for Coakley. So take a close look at the composition of the electorate on election night. If women make up a clear majority, according to exit polls, Coakley may have an edge.

5.) Vicki Kennedy’s impact

Endorsements don’t always have an impact in high-stakes races, but Democrats say Vicki Kennedy’s late endorsement of Coakley could prove pivotal in her last-minute push to win the Cape and the southeastern part of the state — where the Kennedy family name still rings strong.

“I think Kennedy’s endorsement in the last days is the factor that is most likely to get into people’s conscience,” said James Roosevelt, a Massachusetts member of the Democratic National Committee. “I think if we see a result that is different from what the poll is showing, that will be in part because of the Kennedy endorsement.”

Barnstable and Plymouth counties along Cape Cod are the places where Kennedy’s memory would most likely rescue Coakley in the eleventh hour. If she wins those counties — bellwether areas that Obama won narrowly in 2008 — it is a good sign for her campaign.

Jeffrey Berry, a Tufts University political scientist, cautioned that Coakley can’t rely on the Kennedy family name to pull her across the finish line.

“I think Democrats are surprised that the Kennedy seat might be going Republican, but most voters don’t relate Coakley to the Kennedy family.”

In a sign that voters in the state might not be looking for a candidate to carry on the Kennedy legacy, Kennedy last week called her late husband’s seat “the people’s seat,” not the “Kennedy seat,” in a closing Coakley ad.



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