The Republican candidate for Massachusetts governor, Charlie Baker, leads his Democratic opponent for the first time in the state’s weekly tracking poll, conducted by NPR station WBUR. Baker is up 43–42 on the state’s attorney general, Martha Coakley — a slim lead and well within the margin of error, but the first lead he’s held in the poll (as an aside: of course Massachusetts’s biggest poll is conducted by an NPR affiliate).
This isn’t a fluke: The director of the poll notes, “It’s one of several polls which over the last week or so have shown a movement toward Baker. Coakley has essentially been treading water while Baker’s been climbing.” Baker trailed by three poitns in the previous WBUR poll.
Michael Cowett wrote about Baker’s chances for NRO this week, pointing out that he’s made some inroads with Democrats and urban voters that might give him a chance to triumph this time, after losing to Deval Patrick (a vastly better candidate than Coakley) four years ago. The WBUR poll director noted similar trends: Baker has shrunk Coakley’s 21-point lead in the poll among voters from Boston and 26 Massachusetts cities down to nine points, and Coakley’s share of the Democratic vote has remained stuck around the high 60s.