A new poll shows a shift in favor of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race. It's a potential disaster for the Democratic political agenda.
The Suffolk University survey released late Thursday showed Scott Brown, a Republican state senator, with 50 percent of the vote in the race to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in this overwhelmingly Democratic state.
Democrat Martha Coakley had 46 percent. That was a statistical tie since it was within the poll's 4.4 percentage point margin of error, but far different from a 15-point lead the Massachusetts attorney general enjoyed in a Boston Globe survey released over the weekend.
The Suffolk poll also confirmed a fundamental shift in voter attitudes telegraphed in recent automated polls that Democrats had dismissed as unscientific and the product of GOP-leaning organizations.
And it signaled a possible death knell for the 60-vote Democratic supermajority the president has been relying upon to stop Republican filibusters in the Senate and pass not only his health care overhaul, but the rest of his legislative agenda heading into this fall's mid-term elections.
Brown has pledged to vote against the health care bill, and his election would give Senate Republicans the 41st vote they need to sustain a filibuster.
A Coakley campaign ad accuses Scott Brown of voting with Republicans 96% of the time. It may be a counterproductive smear. In light of recent Rasmussen polling, guilt by that particular association may help Brown more than it hurts. In one poll Republicans lead Democrats by nine in the generic congressional ballot. In another the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats at its lowest in the last seven years. Coakley may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer.
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