Over the past few days there has been a lot of buzz that the race in the January 19th special election to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy between Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley and Republican state Sen. Scott Brown has gotten closer.
Some of this buzz has been generated by conservatives who have rallied around Brown and his message of fiscal restraint. The rest has come in the wake of a Rasmussen IVR poll that showed Brown within nine points of Coakley. The survey, taken January 4 of 500 likely voters, gave Coakley a 50-percent to 41-percent lead over Brown. Her favorable/unfavorable ratings were 60 percent to 35 percent, while Brown’s were 58 percent to 25 percent.
If Brown’s campaign has struggled to get the attention of the national political press corps, this poll certainly has. Even national Republicans are more attentive to the race than they were last month. But, is it even possible that a Republican could win the seat Kennedy occupied for decades in what is arguably the most Democratic state in the country? Democrats quickly
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