State House News Service

September 7, 2010                                                                                                         www.statehousenews.com

SHNS POLL SHOWS PATRICK LEADING BUT DAMAGED AT THRESHOLD OF FIRST DEBATE

By Craig Sandler

STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, SEPT. 7, 2010…. Gov. Deval Patrick leads Republican challenger Charlie Baker by six points in the latest State House News Poll, but his job performance and unfavorable numbers provide a golden opportunity for Baker to unseat the incumbent – if Baker can solve the problem posed by Treasurer Timothy Cahill.

Patrick earned 34 percent among the 362 registered Massachusetts voters sampled.  Baker took 28 percent and 18 percent opted for independent candidate Cahill, who registered stronger levels of support among unenrolled voters, according to the poll.  Green Party candidate Jill Stein won 4 percent.   Those likely voters came from a sample of 400 residents polled last week.  The poll has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percent.

State House News Pollster Gerry Chervinsky, who’s gathered data and advised candidates in Massachusetts for four decades, said the tightness of the race and Patrick’s low job performance rating mean that, “If Deval Patrick were in a one on one race and there were no Tim Cahill, Deval Patrick wouldn’t have a chance.”

Some 56 percent of those polled said Patrick is doing a poor or below average job as governor.  Another 9 percent rated his performance average.  About 33 percent said he’s done an excellent or above average job. 

“What’s most striking” about the survey “is how vulnerable Gov. Patrick seems,” Chervinsky said.  “Almost everyone (98 percent) has an opinion of Patrick’s performance as governor, and 56 percent disapprove.  When that’s the case, in a one-on-one race, all the challenger needs to do is be there with a promise of being different.”

But so far, Chervinsky said, Baker’s campaign “is doing such a horrible job of presenting to people who he is…he’s been defending the Big Dig as well as criticizing it [for example].  His opponents have defined him just as successfully as he’s been able to define himself. 

Baker has a chance to change that dramatically Tuesday night, at the first televised gubernatorial debate of the season.  “Baker needs to increase his name recognition, and then he needs to motivate voters to hope for him.  He can make himself well known, define himself positively and then offer himself as the alternative.” Cahill, meanwhile, will try to lay out the case for himself as a strong alternative to two weak choices.

A potentially hopeful sign for both Baker and Cahill, and especially Baker: wide swaths of the electorate have not decided or heard about them, even though they’ve been campaigning for months and the election is two months away.   Some 62 percent of respondents said they either hadn’t heard of Baker or formed an opinion about him; 52 said the same about Cahill, who is completing his second four-year term as state treasurer.

Chervinsky did point out one interesting phenomenon in the poll, taken over the last three days of August: Cahill seems to be drawing away conservative Democrats from Patrick with more or less the same strength he’s drawing down Baker’s numbers among independents.    That contradicts the conventional wisdom that Cahill is bound to draw more voters away from Baker than Patrick.  “Among independent voters, Baker gets 33 percent, Patrick gets 19 percent, Cahill gets 26.  He’s not taking support away from Baker.  He’s taking Democratic-leaning independent voters away from Patrick,” Chervinsky said.

Voters in the survey like Patrick personally more than his job performance.  His favorable/unfavorable, while not good, is not as alarming as the job rating figures: 39 percent favorable, 49 percent unfavorable.

In addition to the governor’s race, the State House News Poll asked Democratic voters who said they’d likely vote in the Sept. 14 primary who they preferred for treasurer and auditor.  Both statewide posts are up for grabs. 

Boston City Councilor Steve Murphy outpolled former state Democratic committee chairman Steve Grossman, 18 to 14 percent, but that’s well within the margin of error for the 250 likely Democratic voters polled.  Some 56 percent of respondents said they don’t know for whom they’ll vote. 

For auditor, former state representative and former Cabinet secretary Suzanne Bump also held a statistically-insignificant lead over Worcester County Sheriff Guy Glodis – 13 percent to 11 percent.  Mike Lake polled 7 percent in that race.   A majority – 53 percent to be exact – said they haven’t decided, with just two weeks to go.

“It’s really going to be all about the next week,” Chervinsky said.  “This is when people focus in.”

The survey also tested the popularity and job performance ratings of U.S. Sens. Scott Brown and John Kerry. 

Brown is more popular, but Kerry doesn’t suffer as badly as one might suspect given the glowing attention Brown has enjoyed outside right wing circles, and Kerry’s yacht-tax difficulties this summer.  While Brown’s personal popularity soars above the senior senator – Brown’s favorable/unfavorable ran 53/23, with Kerry’s at 48/40 – statistically the same proportion of people said Kerry is doing a good job (45 percent) as said Brown was (47 percent).  About 10 percent more said Kerry was doing a poor job as senator – 43 percent rated Kerry’s job performance negatively, while 33 percent had a negative rating of Brown’s performance.

The State House News Poll is a telephone poll conducted among 400 adults living in Massachusetts by KRC/Communications Research for The State House News Service. The poll was conducted August 29-31, 2010, using standard random-digit-dialing techniques, and carries an overall margin of error of +/-4.8%, with a margin of error of +/-5.0% for the subset of 362 registered voters and a margin of error of +/-6.1% for the subset of 250 likely Democratic primary voters.

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