Recent polling showing incumbent Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, leading her Republican rival Mike Minogue by double digits isn’t tracking with the GOP’s own figures.
A new Republican National Committee (RNC) survey shows a much tighter matchup with the election just over a week away.
Polls conducted and released last week by UMass Amherst/WCVB-TV and Suffolk University/The Boston Globe gave Healey 25-point and 23-point leads, respectively, illustrating what they call “broad-based support” for the incumbent Democrat.
But questions over whether the polls accurately represent the Massachusetts voter base and when they were conducted have been raised as internal RNC polling shows a much tighter race between Minogue and Healey.
The UMass Amherst/WCVB-TV poll was conducted between Oct. 8 and Oct. 12, three days before the second and final gubernatorial debate — one hosted by the local TV news outlet that showed a strong performance by Minogue. The timing of the poll before the Oct. 15 debate, as well as its release nearly a week later, raises concerns over relevancy and fairness as it preceded a scheduled and potentially pivotal moment in the election.
“Gov. Healey leads across the state’s gender, income, racial, and generational groups, with women, middle-aged voters, and voters of color favoring her over Minogue by wide margins,” said poll director and UMass Amherst provost professor Tatishe Nteta.
“She has also maintained strong support among moderates and independents, two key voting blocs that have historically played an important role in Republican gubernatorial victories in the commonwealth,” Nteta continued. “While Minogue still has time to make the race more competitive, Healey’s broad-based support puts her in a strong position to retain the corner office on Beacon Hill.”
The Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll was conducted from Oct. 14 thru Oct. 17, during that final Healey-Minogue debate.
“Voters may agree with Mike Minogue that taxes are too high and that Massachusetts has become a worse to place to live over the past four years,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “But that message is coming from someone who is perceived as too close to Donald Trump, one of the reasons Minogue hasn’t gotten traction in his race against Governor Healey.”
Minogue criticized both polls for the number of respondents they interviewed, as well as the demographics of those polled. The UMass Amherst/WCVB-TV survey was based on a sample of 800 registered Massachusetts voters while the Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll used a sample of just 500 voters.
“There’s lies, damn lies, and polling, and the polling that they’re putting out is false, and they’re trying to dissuade people from voting. We are going to win if people come out and vote early. We are voting early. I voted today,” Minogue told the Herald over the phone Thursday.
“These prior polls are 500 people, and the mix of them is 54% Democrats, which is more than double what we’ve ever seen in voting in Massachusetts because only 23% are Democrats,” he continued. But the biggest flaw is it only has 16% of people questioned being unenrolled, when in reality, 67% of our voters are unenrolled.”
“We know it’s a tight race because Maury Healey is draining her 12 years of raising money from the political establishment as the AG and now as governor to try to stay in power. The political establishment knows it’s close.”
Meanwhile, a recent post-debate RNC poll of 2,692 Massachusetts voters reported a tighter race than the others, with Healey (45.2%) holding just a 7-point lead over Minogue (38.2%), with Independent candidate Andrea James seeing support from 1.7% of respondents. The survey recorded 14.9% of respondents were undecided on Healey and Minogue.
Healey and Minogue will face off in the November 3 general election.
