They’re the Holy Grail of Massachusetts politics — those 3.4 million, mostly moderate-to-conservative independents, 67% of the electorate and thus in charge of most election outcomes. They lean Democratic, but vote for acceptable Republicans often enough to avoid being taken for granted. And they don’t like ideologues and partisanship; that’s why they registered unenrolled in the first place.
For any Republican to have a sno-cone’s chance in Hull of winning statewide, they have to win the independent vote — big. A clean sweep of all eleven Republicans plus a few right-wing Dems isn’t going to cut it.
So what does last week’s ever-reliable Suffolk/Globe poll tell us about indie temperature? That the wide leads held by every Democrat running statewide suggest a blown opportunity by the Massachusetts GOP.
Independents are considerably less thrilled about Gov. Maura Healey than the electorate overall. They favor her over Mike Minogue by just six points compared with her 23-point spread among all voters. Math-whiz fact check: that’s a stunning 17–point discrepancy.
Why? Asked if Healey’s first term performance has been better or worse than they expected, the unenrolled were five points more likely than the voters at large to say it’s been worse, six points less likely to say it’s been better. And they are more bummed than the average Masshole with the way things are, seven points more likely to characterize the state of the state as getting a little or significantly worse, five points more likely than the overall electorate to say taxes are too high. They share the overwhelmingly widespread conviction that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
The independents are also not especially enthused with most of the constitutional officers. Their support for Healey, Attorney General Andrea Campbell, State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg and even state Auditor Diana “Joan of Arc” DiZoglio lags behind the overall polling by a spread outside the margin of error. (Exception to the rule: Secretary of State Bill Galvin, whose across-the-board popularity will make a good subject for a future column.)
Could any of their GOP challengers have a shot at winning if not for the massive orange anvil around their necks? Maybe. Independents here are a bit less marinated in Trump loathing than the voters as a whole. In the Suffolk poll they say they voted for Kamala Harris over Trump two years ago by a 51-35% margin, well behind the 59-31% spread overall. And they are seven points more likely to vote for a Trump supporter, should that person seem sane.
They even gave Minogue a positive favorable/unfavorable rating, 33-28%, the reverse of his overall 28-33% results. But while the GOP nominee has explicitly appealed for independent support, he’s not nearly getting enough of it.
Keep in mind, many of these voters ditched the party labels they inherited along with unwanted brown furniture.
They don’t gravitate toward ideological conformity. Healey is no heretic, but she has had her independent moments. She defied the teachers’ unions on right-to-strike, MCAS and literacy reform, clashed with the left over tax cuts and criminal justice issues, and has occasionally expressed frustration with the Democratic Legislature. By contrast, Minogue’s glancing criticisms of tariffs and brownshirt ICE tactics and pretzel-like abortion contortions may not have created the distancing from right-wing group-think needed to impress the indies.
The independents may lack trust in political institutions, but while that makes them establishment skeptics it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re buying the right-wing talk radio crowd’s conviction that all incumbents are crooks. Minogue leaned awfully hard on that trope, not always effectively. During the WBZ debate he backed up his big-dollar ad blitz about the big-dollar plans for a new Springfield courthouse with a prolonged attack on Healey’s integrity. Finally, she clapped back: “Do me the decency of not questioning my integrity.”
Minogue’s weak-sauce reply: “I'm not questioning your integrity, I’m doing math on the building.”
We’re approaching the 17th anniversary of Scott Brown’s brilliant debate rebuke to Martha Coakley that distilled the independent voter ethos: “It’s not the Kennedy seat … it’s the people’s seat.”
This wasn’t that.
