PPP's final polls in Massachusetts and Connecticut find that Democrats are likely to pick up the Senate seat in the former and hold onto the open seat in the latter. Elizabeth Warren leads Scott Brown 52-46 in the Massachusetts contest, while Chris Murphy has a 52-43 advantage over Linda McMahon in Connecticut.
Scott Brown has a 52/36 approval rating. Usually Senators with those kinds of approval numbers are safe for reelection. But Warren needed to do 2 things in this campaign: solidify the Democratic vote behind her and reduce Brown's advantage with independents. She's succeeded on both of those fronts. 84% of Democrats are planning to vote for her, only slightly less than the 88% of Republicans Brown's winning. And Warren's deficit with independents is only 21 points at 59-38. In a vacuum that might sound pretty bad, but our final poll of the 2010 Massachusetts Senate special election found Brown defeating Martha Coakley 64-32 with them so Warren's really made up a fair amount of ground on that front.
In Connecticut our final poll finds Chris Murphy with his largest lead all year at 9 points. He's increased his advantage by 5 points since two weeks ago when he was ahead just 48-44. Linda McMahon, already unpopular, has just become more disliked by voters in the state over the last couple weeks. Only 37% have a favorable opinion of her to 52% with an unfavorable one. For a Republican to win in Connecticut requires their party to be strongly unified around them. But McMahon is losing 19% of the GOP vote to Murphy, a good deal more than the 14% of Democrats she's picking up. McMahon is also performing terribly with women, trailing Murphy 55-39 with them.
Any thought that Mitt Romney might have a home field advantage in his home state or its neighbor can be put to rest- his favorability in Massachusetts is 40/54 and in Connecticut it's 41/52.
Full results here
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