Massachusetts Democrats Still Favor a Kennedy for U.S. Senat
Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 8:44 am
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20090 ... czmnvu5dlg
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley tops a field of potential Democratic candidates for the Senate seat of the late Edward Kennedy as a majority of party voters said they would back Joseph P. Kennedy II, who has declined to make the run, a poll found.
Fifty-nine percent of Massachusetts Democrats surveyed by Boston’s Suffolk University released late yesterday said they would support Joseph Kennedy, a former Massachusetts congressman and nephew of the late senator, if he were in the race.
Kennedy withdrew his name from consideration Sept. 8, saying he wanted to continue his work at Citizens Energy, a nonprofit group he founded to help the needy.
“If Joe Kennedy runs, Joe Kennedy wins,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which surveyed 500 Massachusetts voters Sept. 12 through Sept. 15. The poll’s margin of error for its entire sample is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
“There’s no question the Kennedys are much loved,” said Jeffrey Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. The specific question on Kennedy, asking if voters would choose him without putting him up against other candidates, may “exaggerate his strength. It’s a soft question that taps sentimentality,” he said.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley tops a field of potential Democratic candidates for the Senate seat of the late Edward Kennedy as a majority of party voters said they would back Joseph P. Kennedy II, who has declined to make the run, a poll found.
Fifty-nine percent of Massachusetts Democrats surveyed by Boston’s Suffolk University released late yesterday said they would support Joseph Kennedy, a former Massachusetts congressman and nephew of the late senator, if he were in the race.
Kennedy withdrew his name from consideration Sept. 8, saying he wanted to continue his work at Citizens Energy, a nonprofit group he founded to help the needy.
“If Joe Kennedy runs, Joe Kennedy wins,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which surveyed 500 Massachusetts voters Sept. 12 through Sept. 15. The poll’s margin of error for its entire sample is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
“There’s no question the Kennedys are much loved,” said Jeffrey Berry, a political scientist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. The specific question on Kennedy, asking if voters would choose him without putting him up against other candidates, may “exaggerate his strength. It’s a soft question that taps sentimentality,” he said.
