Deval Patrick's lead may be bigger than you think

Friday, the Boston Herald screamed the headline "Poll says race is between Cahill & Baker." It's safe to say that a Herald reader that didn't get into the article would believe that Governor Deval Patrick was getting trounced, or at least was losing. Funny, that's not what the poll said:

Gov. Deval Patrick’s standing with voters is so weak that this year’s race for governor is shaping up as a contest between his two rivals, a new Suffolk University-7News poll shows.

“This race is really between Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which conducted the poll. “Whoever emerges between the Baker-Cahill race is likely to be the winner.”

As for Patrick, Paleologos said, “On paper, he leads.”

The governor’s grip on a precarious lead continues, with the incumbent Democrat taking 33 percent of the vote compared to Republican Baker’s 25 percent and Treasurer Timothy Cahill, running as an independent, close behind with 23 percent.

Green-Rainbow Party candidate Jill Stein trails with a distant 3 percent, and 16 percent are undecided, according to the survey of 500 likely voters.

Amazing. Governor Patrick holds a lead outside the margin of error, yet the "race is really between Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill." In the official Suffolk University press release touting the poll there is no suggestion that Patrick is losing, but there is this note on momentum:

Patrick (33 percent) still leads the tightening field, followed by Baker (25 percent), who edges out Independent candidate and State Treasurer Tim Cahill (23 percent). Green Party candidate Jill Stein has 3 percent, while 16 percent are undecided.  In a November, 2009 poll, Patrick led Cahill 36 percent to 26 percent, while Baker, the former Harvard Pilgrim chief executive, was a distant third with only 15 percent.

Now, it looks to me like Patrick's and Cahill's standings haven't changed a bit (their three-point drops would be within the margin of error), but that Baker has picked up 10 points from undecided voters. I'm still not sure how that translates into a Patrick loss, but there you go.

I suppose seeing the incumbent governor at 33% could mean that he is toast. That is one way to look at it. But there are also a couple of other ways of looking at the Suffolk poll.

For instance, looking at the demographics of this poll, one thing stood out to me. According to the marginals posted on Suffolk's web site, the polling sample went 49-36 for Scott Brown in January's special election. That corresponds to a 57-42 advantage when you take out the 14% who did not vote or refused to answer. We know that Scott Brown actually won by a 52-47 advantage, so I wondered what would happen if I weighted the votes for governor based on a 52-47 margin among the 431 respondents who said they voted. (I did not re-weigh the votes of the other 69 respondents).

Here is how the poll looks based on a 52-47 Brown win:

Patrick -- 35
Baker -- 24
Cahill -- 22
Stein -- 3
Undecided -- 16

That changes the Patrick margin from +8 to +11. Not a huge change, but one that could cause a tabloid like the Herald to scream "Patrick cruising with double-digit lead" if it were inclined to ever say anything positive about the governor.

Another way one might choose to look at the poll is that while Patrick continues to do very well with Coakley voters, neither Cahill or Baker have broken through with Brown voters. Here are the numbers (no weighting):

Among Coakley voters:
Patrick -- 62
Cahill -- 15
Baker -- 7
Stein -- 4
Undecided -- 12

Among Brown voters:
Baker -- 42
Cahill -- 28
Patrick -- 11
Stein -- 2
Undecided -- 16

If Baker is going to match Patrick's base, he'll need somewhere around 57% of Brown voters to come even. He also cannot afford to give up Brown voters to Patrick (11%) at a higher rate than Patrick bleeds Coakley voters to Baker (7%).

Here is another way to look at it. Let's take Suffolk's numbers in this poll and compare them to the six previous polls in this race (there may be others, but I could only find seven):

Notice Suffolk's numbers. In their previous two polls, Patrick had his two best showings while Baker had his only two results under 20 percent. In other words, Baker may not have momentum at all; rather maybe the Suffolk poll has been out of sync in its previous iterations and is just now falling into line with the other surveys.

Sure, it would be great if Patrick were polling in the mid-40s, but he's not. Even so, no matter how you slice it, he is winning today just as he has been since the start of the campaign. If Cahill stays in the race and Patrick shores up the rest of Coakley's supporters, he will be reelected.

Keller: Deval Patrick should quit before he wins again

Channel 4 political editor, crank, and Deval Patrick-hater Jon Keller came up with a real doozy earlier this week in relation to a new Rasmussen poll showing the Governor with a big lead in his re-election race. How does Keller think Patrick should respond to the news that he’s on his way to reelection? Quit!

If Gov. Deval Patrick were to win re-election despite half the electorate wanting him out and only 14% admitting to a very favorable view of him - as this poll suggests would happen if the election were held today - what would re-election be worth? How would he function as a weak, widely-disliked lame duck, dealing with a hostile legislature? Why would he want to be in such a position? And how can he argue that it's in the best interests of the state to suffer through four years of that?

Seriously? The governor is so far ahead that he should quit, saving us the pain of four more years of Deval (despite the fact that we appear to be voting him back into office)? That might be the most ridiculous thing I’m going to read in the 12 months leading up to the election. Definitely the leader in the clubhouse.

Why does Keller fear that Patrick will win? Looking more closely at the numbers, it’s hard to see how Patrick loses. The scenario where Tim Cahill’s candidacy would hand Patrick another term appears to be coming true. Here are the numbers:

With Christy Mihos as the Republican nominee:
Deval Patrick (D) -- 34%
Christy Mihos (R) -- 23%
Tim Cahill (I) -- 23%
Not sure -- 19%

With Charlie Baker as the Republican nominee:
Deval Patrick (D) -- 34%
Charlie Baker (R) -- 24%
Tim Cahill (I) -- 23%
Not sure -- 19%

Patrick currently holds at least a 10-point lead. In a best-case scenario for a challenger (assuming these numbers hold as a minimum—a dicey assumption 12 months out), the third place finisher would end up with at least 23%, meaning it would only take 39% of the vote to win. To get to 39%, Patrick could lose the “Not Sure” voters by as much as 3-1 to whomever finishes second and still be victorious (39-38-23).

In a scenario where the two challengers split the undecided vote evenly, Patrick could still win even if he picked up no votes from that group (34-33-33).

In other words, Patrick only loses a race with three strong candidates under a scenario where the economy gets so much worse over the next 12 months that Patrick loses the support he has.

And while it is certainly possible that things will get worse, there is a pretty good chance that the economy is starting to turn around. If that happens—even a little—then the only way Patrick loses is if Cahill drops out or if Patrick suffers some sort of scandal that isn’t even on the radar at this time.

Keller is smart enough to figure this out—he knows that unless things get even worse, the only way Patrick loses is if he quits.

Of course, Keller fails to mention the obvious. A Republican who wins with only 35% of the vote will also be a “weak, widely-disliked lame duck, dealing with a hostile legislature.” If Cahill were to win, the same would apply. So why not ask one of them to quit, Jon?