PPP polls a number of non existing opponents to Brown, find that he beats them all, but does not

[Mass]

reach 50 %

For some obscure reasons, PPP decided to poll unlikeable candidate against Brown, including Coakley and Rachel Maddow, while not polling some existing candidates like Marisa DiFranco or Tom Conroy.

The bad news is that nobody beats Brown. Coakley is the best candidate, Setti Warren the worst.

When you look closer to this poll, it becomes clear that this poll reflects nothing else than name recognition in the general population or in some very specific sector of the population: Warren does slightly better than Massie and Warren because she is better known in the very liberal population of the state.

http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2011/06/brown-continues-to-do-well.html

A few bright points. Brown's favorability dropped by 12 % since this winter. Except against Khzzei, he does not reach 50 %.

Frankly, I do not think this type of poll has a lot of merits for the race itself. But it is good to see Brown is losing ground.

[karynnj]

1. It is interesting that his favorability has fallen and his disapproval has increased

as much as it has in 6 months. There is a big difference between 53% and 48%. It is interesting that it comes almost entirely from Democrats. There will be more tough votes for Brown and he will often be between what his state wants and what his party wants. The real question is whether the independents will also tip.

I think the head to heads are all silly as the Democrats are not yet known. They point out that it is mostly Democrats who are undecided at this point. It is a good sign that he never reaches 50%. It does mean that the Democrats need to find a good candidate and then get behind him/her.

I also think that this poll, which did not look at other Democrats not running, likely means that we can finally argue that Brown is NOT the most popular Senator or politician. Kerry has been above 50% consistently. (Not important, but it is annoying.)

[Mass]

2. Scott Brown is not the most popular pol in MA. Both Kerry and Patrick do better.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_MA_0608.pdf

[karynnj]

3. This is great

It is weird that PPP, which is left leaning, refers to the difference of 48/36 and 55/36 as "slightly better". That is a pretty big difference. Brown was NEVER in any poll 7 points higher than Kerry - in the last poll they were at the same approval and the papers spoke of him being more popular as Kerry's negatives were higher. Though the difference between Kerry and Patrick is insignificant, using the standards used for Brown - he is the most popular politician in the state. In spite of poor coverage by the media.

Looking at the details, this likely understates Kerry's likely real electability (for lack of a better word) - over 15% of the liberals and moderate liberals either disapprove or are not sure about their Senator for the last quarter of a century. In reality, against any Republican, he is very likely to get the votes of most of them. (I suspect that his Libya position hurt here.)

This is a very nice increase in Kerry's numbers. It is also nice that Brown's negatives now equal Kerry's. That is pretty amazing in that Brown has gotten mostly friendly coverage and Kerry was smeared for decades by the right.

[Mass]

5. A second poll shows Brown's popularlity waning

http://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/News-and-Features/Online-exclusives/2011/Spring/003-Whos-the-fairest-one-of-all.aspx

One year later, there’s a little fade on Brown’s patina. A MassINC Polling Group survey earlier last month found Brown in fourth behind Joe Kennedy, Kerry, and Gov. Deval Patrick.

[karynnj]

6. Nice to have two polls showing the decline

The MassINC poll does not seem to have the dates polled, but the results were dated May 2, 2002. So, it almost certain it was polled before Brown's bad week, which started on May 2, the day after Osama was killed, and before his indecision on the Ryan budget. (It is right when the ad on Brown's EPA vote was playing - suggesting that one thing people might have thought of when asked was his EPA vote.) This might show how really vulnerable Brown is to issue ads where his positions and the state's diverge.

[Mass]

4. There was a laughable clip by Jon Keller yesterday night trying to push Martha Coakley as the

Democratic nominee based on this poll.

However, he did not say that Brown did not breach the 50 % threshold or that Patrick and Kerry were more popular than that. I wonder why?