After going to press, a new Massachusetts poll hit that has results for the Senate primary, presidential race, and two Congressional District primaries. The results are pretty interesting - and for at least two races, contradictory to what we are hearing from other public and internal campaign pollsters. The pollster is Gravis (C rating), a low-rated outfit compared to the three Massachusetts polls I referenced in today’s original post. Here are the topline results (“i” means incumbent):
Democratic Senate Primary: Kennedy 52%, Markey (i) 45%; Kennedy +7
MA-01 Democratic Primary: Neal (i) 47%, Morse 46%; Neal +1
MA-04 Democratic Primary: Mermel 16%, Auchincloss 15%, Grossman 14%, Khazei 14%, Leckey 12%, Linos 10%, Siegel 8%, Uncertain 11%.
President: Biden 64%, Trump 25%; Biden +39
The Kennedy and Morse camps have been saying that they see a closer race than what the incumbents are saying. Perhaps they are seeing some things that the pollsters are missing. I doubt it; I tend to think this poll - at least for the Senate race - probably an outlier. But, one thing that is notoriously difficult to poll is Senate and House primaries. Look at the 4th CD! Anyone of those candidates could win on Tuesday, except we know from experience that that is not really true - it’s likely only 2 or 3 candidates really have a shot at winning (almost all of that 11% uncertain will go with 2 or 3 candidates when they make up their minds). But with so many candidates, we just don’t know until the votes are in. We’ll know for sure on Tuesday.