Here it is: Election Day in the special election for US Senate in Massachusetts. If you are in Massachusetts, you cannot avoid this race as TV ads, Web ads, and phone calls are blanketing the state even more so than the snowfall. Turnout should be high, particularly for this, a special general election held in January.
As I have held throughout the election, voter turnout is key, as each candidate has enough support to win, if they turn their votes out and the other does not. It appears (see Boston Globe story here) that both campaigns are working feverishly to get their voters out, as anyone who has received multiple phone calls may attest. People have reported receiving recorded GOTV (Get-Out-The-Vote) calls from the candidates, from President Obama, Curt Schilling, and others as well as live calls from anonymous phone bank staff.
I am surprised this morning that television ads are continuing. The two campaigns (as well as third party organizations) clearly have more money on hand than they could spend prior to Election Day, when campaign ads traditionally “go dark” and vanish. Between the two candidates and the third parties, they seem to have bought up every available time slot. In my own TV watching of the past couple of days I saw entire commercial breaks with no ads other than those about this race. The saturation of the campaign messages is remarkable.
In an ordinary election, candidates must compete for time slots not only with non-political ads but also with candidates for other races, ballot questions, etc. In this election season, the ads have been all Coakley and Brown, all the time, and to the extent Martha Coakley’s ads have focused more on Scott Brown than on herself, it’s been all Brown, all the time.
To me, the most striking thing about the ads is not just that they have continued into Election Day, but that the Coakley campaign has continued its negative campaign against Brown into Election Day. Conventional wisdom is that you want to finish with only a positive message so that the voters’ last impressions of you are positive. You do not want them remembering that you were slinging mud. Either the Coakley campaign is re-writing the election playbook or their polls show them continuing to lose ground and to run behind Brown. I’m betting it’s the latter.
All the polls in the closing days (see story here) have had Brown continuing to surge; he’s now leading Coakley in just about every poll. My eye test tells me the same thing: lots of Brown lawn-signs out there, not too many for Coakley. Even in their campaigning yesterday, Brown’s body-language seemed confident and energized, Coakley’s stiff and tired. They said the same things, more or less, about the polls: that the one that matters is today. Yet the nuances of their language gave hints of their insider knowledge. Brown said they were taking nothing for granted, Coakley said she didn’t believe the polls. They’ve seen the numbers, both those we’re seeing and their own internal polls, too.
So, what’s going to happen tonight when the ballots are counted?
First, I think turnout will be high, despite the snow that is falling today. My guess is that we’ll be right around the 50% mark. That’s high, and very high given the paltry turnout in the primary and the date on the calendar.
Second, and I’m still at some level shocked to be writing this, but I think we’ll see a Brown win tonight. I’m not writing this with my heart but with my head. The signs are all there as Brown appears to be ahead and surging, doing all the right things while Coakley is running the campaign of someone who is behind. I know; I’ve been on both sides!
More difficult to predict are the results in this race. Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout benefits Brown, and I believe that’s true. Each side will, it seems, get its hardcore support out. Just by sheer numbers of activists, that will favor Coakley. That hardcore support will get “watered-down,” however, as more casual, independent voters turn out and (at least according to polling) favor Brown. Brown holds a huge lead in polls among Unenrolled (commonly referred to as “Independent”) voters, and the more of them that vote, the better for him. If this were an insider-dominated, small-turnout election with 30% or less voting, Coakley would be a good bet. With 50% turnout (and I’ve heard predictions of much higher turnout than that), this race should go to Brown.
So, as I did in the primary election in a previous post, I will stick my neck out and take a shot at the percentages. Brown will win with 51% of the vote, Coakley finishing with 46%, and Joseph (middle name: “no relation”) Kennedy getting 3%. In Massachusetts, against all odds, this would represent a huge win for Brown.
Starting tomorrow, no matter the outcome, there will be plenty of stories about “what happened” and how it happened; doubtless I’ll take part, once I’ve seen the actual numbers. I will also get a head start on that analysis now.
Regardless of the outcome, Scott Brown has run a tremendous campaign, and deserves credit for that. He has casual voters and political professionals (of both parties) alike believing that a Republican can win in Massachusetts, and that’s a very good thing for us all. Most, if not all, Bay State voters have said, at one time or another, “my vote doesn’t count” because we knew what the outcome would be. That’s not the case in this election. My vote counts. Your vote counts. We’re going to have to wait until all the ballots are counted tonight before we know the result in this race.
Similarly, national campaigns and candidates have routinely skipped Massachusetts because the results were never in doubt. Republicans don’t bother with the Commonwealth and Democrats take it for granted. Wouldn’t it be nice if candidates for President thought they needed to campaign in Massachusetts and our citizens actually got to see and hear them in our neighborhoods?
To the extent this is now a reality regardless of the result, Scott Brown has genuinely done a good thing for Massachusetts. It would be a shame if he were to come up short of winning and people were to think, “Wow, that was close, but in the end, predictable” rather than “Wow, this changes our old perceptions.”
Martha Coakley, on the other hand, has not run a good general election campaign. Initially she herself seemed to take victory for granted, then once she realized the race could be close, has run a negative campaign mostly focused on her opponent rather than on herself. Further, the negative ads run by her campaign and her supporters have been, in my view, not accurate. For instance, one closing message is that Brown would be the deciding vote against healthcare. While Brown has made no secret of his opposition to President Obama’s healthcare plans, he would not, as the “41st” vote against it, stop it. That takes 51 votes, by my math. Forty-one votes against the plan means that the Democrats have to be forthcoming about what they are doing and actually debate and discuss it. They can still pass something, they just have to defend it in the light of day. Why wouldn’t Martha Coakley want that? Food for thought as we all head to the polls.
As I have held throughout the election, voter turnout is key, as each candidate has enough support to win, if they turn their votes out and the other does not. It appears (see Boston Globe story here) that both campaigns are working feverishly to get their voters out, as anyone who has received multiple phone calls may attest. People have reported receiving recorded GOTV (Get-Out-The-Vote) calls from the candidates, from President Obama, Curt Schilling, and others as well as live calls from anonymous phone bank staff.
I am surprised this morning that television ads are continuing. The two campaigns (as well as third party organizations) clearly have more money on hand than they could spend prior to Election Day, when campaign ads traditionally “go dark” and vanish. Between the two candidates and the third parties, they seem to have bought up every available time slot. In my own TV watching of the past couple of days I saw entire commercial breaks with no ads other than those about this race. The saturation of the campaign messages is remarkable.
In an ordinary election, candidates must compete for time slots not only with non-political ads but also with candidates for other races, ballot questions, etc. In this election season, the ads have been all Coakley and Brown, all the time, and to the extent Martha Coakley’s ads have focused more on Scott Brown than on herself, it’s been all Brown, all the time.
To me, the most striking thing about the ads is not just that they have continued into Election Day, but that the Coakley campaign has continued its negative campaign against Brown into Election Day. Conventional wisdom is that you want to finish with only a positive message so that the voters’ last impressions of you are positive. You do not want them remembering that you were slinging mud. Either the Coakley campaign is re-writing the election playbook or their polls show them continuing to lose ground and to run behind Brown. I’m betting it’s the latter.
All the polls in the closing days (see story here) have had Brown continuing to surge; he’s now leading Coakley in just about every poll. My eye test tells me the same thing: lots of Brown lawn-signs out there, not too many for Coakley. Even in their campaigning yesterday, Brown’s body-language seemed confident and energized, Coakley’s stiff and tired. They said the same things, more or less, about the polls: that the one that matters is today. Yet the nuances of their language gave hints of their insider knowledge. Brown said they were taking nothing for granted, Coakley said she didn’t believe the polls. They’ve seen the numbers, both those we’re seeing and their own internal polls, too.
So, what’s going to happen tonight when the ballots are counted?
First, I think turnout will be high, despite the snow that is falling today. My guess is that we’ll be right around the 50% mark. That’s high, and very high given the paltry turnout in the primary and the date on the calendar.
Second, and I’m still at some level shocked to be writing this, but I think we’ll see a Brown win tonight. I’m not writing this with my heart but with my head. The signs are all there as Brown appears to be ahead and surging, doing all the right things while Coakley is running the campaign of someone who is behind. I know; I’ve been on both sides!
More difficult to predict are the results in this race. Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout benefits Brown, and I believe that’s true. Each side will, it seems, get its hardcore support out. Just by sheer numbers of activists, that will favor Coakley. That hardcore support will get “watered-down,” however, as more casual, independent voters turn out and (at least according to polling) favor Brown. Brown holds a huge lead in polls among Unenrolled (commonly referred to as “Independent”) voters, and the more of them that vote, the better for him. If this were an insider-dominated, small-turnout election with 30% or less voting, Coakley would be a good bet. With 50% turnout (and I’ve heard predictions of much higher turnout than that), this race should go to Brown.
So, as I did in the primary election in a previous post, I will stick my neck out and take a shot at the percentages. Brown will win with 51% of the vote, Coakley finishing with 46%, and Joseph (middle name: “no relation”) Kennedy getting 3%. In Massachusetts, against all odds, this would represent a huge win for Brown.
Starting tomorrow, no matter the outcome, there will be plenty of stories about “what happened” and how it happened; doubtless I’ll take part, once I’ve seen the actual numbers. I will also get a head start on that analysis now.
Regardless of the outcome, Scott Brown has run a tremendous campaign, and deserves credit for that. He has casual voters and political professionals (of both parties) alike believing that a Republican can win in Massachusetts, and that’s a very good thing for us all. Most, if not all, Bay State voters have said, at one time or another, “my vote doesn’t count” because we knew what the outcome would be. That’s not the case in this election. My vote counts. Your vote counts. We’re going to have to wait until all the ballots are counted tonight before we know the result in this race.
Similarly, national campaigns and candidates have routinely skipped Massachusetts because the results were never in doubt. Republicans don’t bother with the Commonwealth and Democrats take it for granted. Wouldn’t it be nice if candidates for President thought they needed to campaign in Massachusetts and our citizens actually got to see and hear them in our neighborhoods?
To the extent this is now a reality regardless of the result, Scott Brown has genuinely done a good thing for Massachusetts. It would be a shame if he were to come up short of winning and people were to think, “Wow, that was close, but in the end, predictable” rather than “Wow, this changes our old perceptions.”
Martha Coakley, on the other hand, has not run a good general election campaign. Initially she herself seemed to take victory for granted, then once she realized the race could be close, has run a negative campaign mostly focused on her opponent rather than on herself. Further, the negative ads run by her campaign and her supporters have been, in my view, not accurate. For instance, one closing message is that Brown would be the deciding vote against healthcare. While Brown has made no secret of his opposition to President Obama’s healthcare plans, he would not, as the “41st” vote against it, stop it. That takes 51 votes, by my math. Forty-one votes against the plan means that the Democrats have to be forthcoming about what they are doing and actually debate and discuss it. They can still pass something, they just have to defend it in the light of day. Why wouldn’t Martha Coakley want that? Food for thought as we all head to the polls.
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