In Massachusetts, the biggest polling argument is whether Markey's margin will be large or small. Some poll results may not "tell the whole story" on guns and immigration, but ask the right questions and "polls" will. And the HuffPost/YouGov poll goes where no human has gone before. This is the HuffPost Pollster update for Friday, June 21, 2013.
MARKEY LEADS ON ALL POLLS - With the special election to fill John Kerry's Senate seat in Massachusetts just a few days away, a final round of polls continues to show Democratic Rep. Ed Markey leading Republican nominee Gabriel Gomez by comfortable though varying margins. The two most recent independent polls released on Friday show Markey leading by margins of 10 and 20 percentage points, and Gomez is trailing, albeit by smaller margins, even in his campaign’s own internal automated polling. The Pollster chart, which uses all available public polls to produce a combined estimate of where the race stands, gives Markey a lead of nearly 10 percentage points (50.3 to 40.6) as of this writing. Removing the polls with partisan sponsorship gives Markey a larger, double-digit lead (53.2 to 40.4 percent). [Pollster chart with all polls, without partisan polls]
Very different polls, one leader -- The wide variance in the margins is not surprising given the challenge of accurately measuring the likely electorate in an off-year special election in which turnout is likely to be low. Low turnout elections are more prone to error, something poll watchers should always bear in mind. The small number of polls involved use a wide variety of methods, from a "dual-mode" random digit samples of landlines and cell phones called by live interviewers or the UMass Lowell/Boston Herald Poll to the automated calls to landline phones sampled from registered voter lists for the student run Emerson College poll. But the important point is this: Despite a wide variety of judgement calls by Massachusetts pollsters, 23 surveys conducted since March have all given Markey at least a nominal lead, including 6 surveys sponsored by either the Gomez campaign or Republican interest groups. [UMass Lowell, Emerson College Polling Society]
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/markey-gomez_n_3479995.html
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