OK, Some Analysis

Published Oct 17 2007, 03:12 AM by David S. Bernstein

Based on preliminary, unofficial data:

1. A poll taken immediately after the primary had Tsongas at 51%; she appears to have ended there. Exactly as in the primary, she never gained a vote along the way; never convinced an undecided voter.

2. Tsongas won because of a liberal upper-middle-class suburbia vote; aka an Acton/Concord/Sudbury/Wayland vote; aka a Middlesex vote; aka a Cambridge-extension vote.

3. Tsongas almost lost because Democrats who voted for other candidates in the primary weren't much interested in her -- if just the core Democrats who voted in the party's primary had voted Democrat in the general, she would have had 55,800 votes. She only got 54,300.

4. In particular, Eileen Donoghue's voters in Lowell, Methuen, Dracut and Tyngsborough; Barry Finegold's voters in Andover; and Jim Miceli's voters in Tewksbury abandoned the party in the general election.

New In The Phoenix: Murph Morphs

Congratulations Congresswoman

1 Comments

David said:

Re #1: I'm not sure it's fair to say that Tsongas "never gained a vote along the way" and "never convinced an undecided voter." SurveyUSA's first poll showed a very small undecided vote (only 4%), whereas the margin of error was +/- 4.9%. So for all we know, Tsongas's real support in September was 47%, and she wound up at 51. Not bad. Furthermore, based only on the poll, you could just as easily say that Ogonowski "never convinced a single Tsongas voter to switch." That's probably exactly as accurate a statement, but it sounds a lot better from Tsongas's perspective. Re #2, well, in addition to non-Cantabrigian Dem strongholds like Lowell and Lawrence, she won Haverhill, and she ran close in strong GOP towns like Andover. Of course she got the leafy 'burbs like Concord and Wayland, but she did well elsewhere too. A good post on BMG (not by me) shows that she basically equaled or exceeded Deval throughout the district. http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9122 Re 3 and 4: good points. That's something for the party to think hard about.

October 17, 2007 1:29 PM