<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012203167_pf.html
>
Brown's Massachusetts victory fueled by frustration with Washington, poll shows By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 22, 2010; 3:53 PM
Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, antipathy toward federal government activism and opposition to the Democrats' health- care proposals drove the upset election of Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts, according to a new post-election survey of Massachusetts voters.
The poll by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University's School of Public Health underscores how significantly voter anger has turned against Democrats in Washington and how dramatically the political landscape has shifted during President Obama's first year in office.
Sixty-three percent of Massachusetts special-election voters say the country is seriously off track, and Brown captured two-thirds of these voters in his victory over Democrat Martha Coakley. In November 2008, Obama scored a decisive win among the more than eight in 10 Massachusetts voters seeing the country as off course.
Nearly two-thirds of Brown's voters say their vote was intended at least in part to express opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington, but few say the senator-elect should simply work to stop it. Three-quarters of those who voted for Brown say they would like him to work with Democrats to get Republican ideas into legislation in general; nearly half say so specifically about health-care legislation.
When Obama was elected, 63 percent of Massachusetts voters said government should do more to solve problems, according to exit polling then. In the new poll, that number slipped to 50 percent, with about as many, 47 percent, saying that government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.
Like Obama, Coakley won more than 70 percent of those pro-government voters, but the bigger pool of voters seeing government overreach helped Brown claim victory.
Health care topped jobs and the economy as the most important issue driving Massachusetts voters, but among Brown voters, "the way Washington is working" ran a close second to the economy and jobs as a factor.
Overall, just 43 percent of Massachusetts voters say they support the health-care proposals advanced by Obama and congressional Democrats; 48 percent oppose them. Among Brown's supporters, however, eight in 10 said they were opposed to the measures, 66 percent of them strongly so.
Sizable majorities of Brown voters see the Democrats' plan, if passed, as making things worse for their families, the country and the state of Massachusetts. Few Coakley voters see these harms, and most of those backing her see clear benefits for the country if health-care reform became law. Less than half of Coakley's supporters say they or the state would be better off as a result.
Among Brown voters who say the health-care reform effort in Washington played an important role in their vote, the most frequently cited reasons were concerns about the process, including closed-door dealing and a lack of bipartisanship. Three in 10 highlighted these political machinations as the motivating factor, 22 percent expressed general opposition to reform or the current bill.
Coakley voters, by contrast, cited the need to cover the uninsured and fix the health-care system as the main reasons the issue drove their vote.
Massachusetts enacted a universal health-care plan several years ago, and the survey shows that it remains highly popular. Overall, 68 percent of the voters in Tuesday's election say they support the Massachusetts plan, including slightly more than half of Brown voters.
Obama also remains highly popular in Massachusetts. More than six in 10 of those who voted approve of his job performance, with 92 percent of Coakley voters expressing satisfaction, along with 33 percent of Brown's. More than half of Brown's backers say Obama was not a factor in their vote.
But the Obama administration's policies draw some fire, with nearly half of all special-election voters either dissatisfied or angry about those initiatives. Nearly three-quarters of Brown's voters expressed the negative view.
Republican policies prove even less popular, with 58 percent of Massachusetts voters saying they are dissatisfied or angry about what the Republicans in Congress are offering. Among Brown voters, 60 percent give positive marks to the policies of congressional Republicans, but a sizable number, 37 percent, offer a negative appraisal.
The Massachusetts election brought another indication that the Obama coalition from 2008 has splintered, just as the results in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey showed two months ago.
Compared with the 2008 presidential results, Coakley suffered significant erosion among whites, independents and working-class voters, according to the new survey.
In Massachusetts, independents made up about half of Tuesday's total electorate, according to the new poll, and they supported Brown by nearly a 2 to 1 margin. Obama carried Bay State independents by 17 percentage points in 2008. Among Brown voters, 29 percent said they backed Obama over Republican Sen. John McCain.
Tuesday's competitive election caught many poll-watchers by surprise, with news interest in the campaign peaking too late to organize an exit poll of voters on Election Day. The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University conducted this poll to provide a more complete picture of the stated motivations of special- election voters.
The poll was conducted by conventional and cellular telephone among a random sample of 880 Massachusetts residents who say they voted in the special election. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points for the full sample.
Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta and special consultant Mike Mokrzycki contributed to this report.