In Massachusetts, approximately 50 percent of the electorate is not registered with the Democratic or Republican Party. Voters who in the rest of the country would be called "Independent" we call "Unenrolled", meaning that when they registered to vote they did not choose any party preference.
Frequent references on this blog and on television to Ds outnumbering Rs 3:1 in Massachusetts tend to sidestep this fact. The affiliation breakdown is approximately: 50% Unenrolled, 38% Democratic, and 12% Republican. A recent New York Times report claimed 52-37-11.
Yes 38% is more than three times 12%, but the 50% are the wild card, and most polls are showing Scott Brown with a huge lead among these independent voters, including the most recent Suffolk poll that has flipped Massachusetts politics on its head.
Below the fold is my theory about why independent voters in MA seem to lean Republican generally, which may explain why independent voters in Massachusetts are leaning Republican in the Coakley/Brown Senate race.
There is a large group of voters in Massachusetts whose fathers and grandfathers grew up in Democratic households for ethnic or cultural reasons. Perhaps they have an Irish heritage and bad memories of the mostly Republican Brahmins and No Irish Need Apply. At one time Italians in Massachusetts voted Democratic by a 4:1 margin. Perhaps they are from union households and remember how a union job helped their grandparents survive the Great Depression. And Roosevelt was the champion of the working man even after he died and Truman took up his mantle.
But in the 1970s a bunch of the ethnic/observant Roman Catholic voters started leaning Republican because of Roe v Wade. Hard economic times around the late 70s energy crisis and the tax revolt of the 80s caused some people to believe Republican claims of fiscal responsibility. Massachusetts voted for Reagan twice. In the 90s, Clinton's personal life was an embarrassment, the Republicans seemed to be in the ascendency on the national level, and some people just had a longing to identify with a winner. Hate radio and Fakes News gave angry white men (and the women who depend on them) a voice and a outlet for venting about all the ways the world around them was changing in ways they didn't like.
The Democratic brand is a part of their heritage, their households, and their memories of fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers, but they are drawn to the GOPropaganda message: “you're paying too much in taxes because of people who don't work as hard as you do, and don't work as hard as your fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers worked.” True, they kept Ted in office for almost 50 years, but even among this group there were people who resented the Kennedy dynasty, Kennedy's personal life, and Kennedy support for civil rights for people who “don't work as hard as you do, and don't work as hard as your fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers worked.”
But no matter how seductive the Republican message becomes, these people just can not bear to think of themselves as Republicans. In short, they are drawn to the Republican propaganda, but not to the Republican brand. Resistance to being labeled Republican got even worse under Gdub.
So they registered Independent. In droves. And when they call the talk shows, they parrot conservative talking points they got from reading the Herald and watching Fakes News, all the while claiming they are not Republicans. Local hate radio blowhards like Jay Severin and others of his ilk on WKKK pat them on the back for their “independent thinking” when they are anything but.
Worse even than that, some who share these views are so resistant to the Republican brand that they are still registered Democrats—witness the poll results showing Scott Brown picking up 15-17% of the Democratic vote. The ones who trumpet "I vote the man, not the party" always turn out in force when the Democrat in question is a woman and they actually do choose to "vote the man".
True, there are left-leaning Independents. I was one of them during the 70s, 80s and 90s myself. Although I was raised by a yellow dog Democrat whose ashes will reconstitute themselves and slap me silly if I ever vote Republican again, I used to enjoy being unenrolled and taking the Republican ballot and engaging in strategic voting to mess with Republican primary outcomes when the Democratic primary was uncontested. I voted for Lamar Alexander in 1996 to try to stop Pat Buchanan. I voted for John McCain in 2000 to try to stop George W. Bush. I used to enjoy taking the Republican ballot just to see the shocked look on the poll watchers' faces. And in the only general election R vote of my life, I voted for Bill Weld in 1990 (although I was one of the handful who voted for Mark Roosevelt in 1994). Howard Dean's "What I want to know" speech made me want to identify with the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, and in 2004 I registered as a Democrat for the first time since 1976.
But a fair number of left-leaning independents are pist off right now at Deval Patrick for some of the same reasons people at dK are angry with President Obama. He promised change, he ran on hope, but entrenched powers on Beacon Hill have thwarted a lot of the good he hoped to come in and do as a outsider. A good deal of the left-leaning independents are discouraged and disaffected. I'm hearing variations of "they're all the same" and "what does it matter if we don't get HCR, I hate the bill" and "Coakley's not progressive enough for me to work hard for her." Obama is still popular here though. I can only hope that his visit on Sunday gets a good number of those folks fired up and ready to go in the final 72 hours.
So that is my analysis about what is going on in this very strange Massachusetts special election. It's more than the enthusiasm gap. More than the teabaggers feeling their oats. More than Coakley running a campaign so poor that one pundit said tonight "she makes the Creigh Deeds campaign look like the Barack Obama campaign."
If Ted Kennedy himself were running against an “attractive” candidate like Scott Brown and his pretense to being a Romney/Weld hybrid, we might have seen some of the same dynamic in play. There is an anti-incumbent fever running through Massachusetts just as it is running through the whole country, and all of our incumbents are Democrats.
But if Teddy were the candidate we know Ted would not have taken even a 30 point lead for granted. He always got out his lawn signs and bumper stickers and flyers on telephone poles and TV/radio spots and made his campaign appearances and asked directly for people's votes even when he was running against total R sacrificial lambs like Jack E. Robinson.
If you have friends and family in MA, call all of them and make sure they know there is an election on Tuesday and make them promise to vote.
After that, get on the phone and call total strangers and make sure they know there is an election on Tuesday.
Chuck Todd and other pundits may be calling Scott Brown the favorite in this race, but we can still win this thing, if people stop making unhelpful assumptions about the number of Democrats and Republicans in Massachusetts and realize that Scott Brown's strength in recent polls is because of DINOs and people who are enrolled in no political party.