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Poll says only third of voters think Steve Lynch deserves re-election
By adamg on Fri, 06/04/2010 - 9:08am
David Bernstein gets a peek at some poll numbers done in the 9th District before Lynch had any primary opposition.
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Comments
Lynch
may have forgotten he needs to win a primary, before he gets a shot at the general. Many a fool has done so this past election cycle, and they weren't sitting pretty once the primary was done with.
He was on the wrong side of the healthcare vote. Bad move.
strike three
"Lynch, a relatively conservative Democrat, has been criticized by some liberals for 1) voting against the final health care reform bill earlier this year. In the past, he has also received 2) criticism for his positions on social issues like abortion, and for 3) his vote to authorize the war in Iraq. " - David S. Bernstein
Correct me if I'm wrong..
But didn't Lynch's district vote heavily in favor for S. Brown? Like any policical race in MA, you are going to need someone with some juice to run against him.
The poll says 1/3 support Lynch.
I couldn't say how many of those are tea party/conservative voters.
everywhere did. People didn't
everywhere did.
People didn't like Coakley, and she decided 2 weeks out that she should run a campaign. Not much you can do about that but point and laugh at someone so delusional that she thought they'd give her the seat.
Also, Teabaggers won't be voting for Lynch. Teabaggers are not independents by any means. Pool after pool show their views correlate to the 30% fringe in the GOP base. It's the same hell hollers that have been there since Nixon.
Not everywhere.
Middlesex and Suffolk County voted for Coakley while many of Lynch's towns in Norfolk and Plymouth Counties voted for Brown.
Just saying that might give him an edge against any liberal candidates in those areas.
Barely a third of likely Democratic primary voters in his distri
The poll sampled the whole district including the towns you think Lynch is favored (in a general election) as well as the towns where he is not.
The outcome of the poll is that "barely a third" of "likely Democratic primary voters in his district" say that Lunch deserves re-election. Yes, its early in the cycle and poll number change, moreover all polls are not constructed properly, nonetheless the situation is that Lynch needs to prevail in a primary challenge to make it into the general election. Many of the voters who favor Lynch, Republicans and independents, will not vote for him in the Democratic primary.
I think Lynch is more likely to win a general election than to win the Democratic primary. Lynch's problem is that he must win the primary to compete in the general.
As the incumbent, he has a clear advantage over the challenger/s nonetheless, "barely a third of Democratic primary voters in his district..."
Never been tested
Representative Lynch has never had a serious election test. Not even when he was elected in the first place.
He beat 3 State Senators who split the liberal vote, and won the Democratic special primary election with 40% of the vote in 2002. Hmm, not much different from his support right now. Then he beat the Republican. All special elections, low turnout, no surprises.
2004: no opposition.
2006: Easily beat little-known Democratic challenger Phil Dunklebarger and GOP unknown.
2008: no opposition.
Be careful before calling him
Be careful before calling him dead in the water. Right now liberals are mad at him over the health care vote and other people are mad at him because they have heard he is no good from those people. I wonder if those voters know why the liberals are mad at him, that may change the calculus and that will come up in primary.
The real wild card will be how many of those undeclared voters went out and registered Republican in response to the Scott Brown victory. A wave of Republican registrations will suck votes away from Lynch.
The real wild card
Is that a documented trend or just a notion that occurred to you?
I'm unregistered and I vote progressive which usually means I vote Democratic but not always. The Coakley/Brown special election was an election I spent the most amount of time ever considering before I cast my vote.
In the end I decided to not vote for Coakley even though I preferred some of her valuesover Brown. I did not vote for her becuase she is a corporatist and I feel that personal freedoms and economic justice is threatened by the trend she represents in Democratic circles, a pro-Corporate federal government that allows the capture of regulatory agencies, including big oil, wall street banking and government policy that affect our manufacturing base. I didn't vote for Coakley or Brown. I voted for Elizabeth Warren and I certainly did not run out and register as a Republican when Brown won. I don't think people jump on the bandwagon when their opponent wins a race, they instead double-down on their efforts to get their own people elected.
Is it possible that you
Is it possible that you possibly may be an exception? If I recall Elizabeth Warren was not a real factor in this race.
If by the "real wild card"
you mean 'remotely possible' then I suppose you're right.
Are Republican registrations up in MA since January? That would be a piece of information that would substantiate your "real wild card" theory.
My Warren vote represents a dissatisfaction with the Democratic candidate. That Brown did not get my vote says the same about the Republican candidate. Clearly many Democrats were dissatisfied with the Democratic candidate. Most of them stayed home. I didn't.
It would be interesting to know that
I doubt the number is all that high though. I seem to remember similar claims when Weld won the governor's office, but it never amounted to much for the party at that point. Weld won his own primary without the endorsement of his own state party organization because independents and democrats temporarily registered Republican in order to make sure he made it to the final round. While the same statewide Republican leaders that hated Weld touted those registrations as "proof" that their ideology was favored, most knew better. In fact, most switched right back at the polls as they left. The election officers where I lived at the time asked me to hold off on the post-vote party switch so I could count ballots later that evening.
Lynch...Labor?
Congressman Lynch cut his Political Teeth with Organized Labor. However, he seems to have forgotten where he came from. I for one will not be voting for Lynch!