Trouble At Home: Nearly Half Of Massachusetts Voters Want Warren Gone

Aside from the Patriots heading to their seventh Super Bowl, the other big news out of Massachusetts this morning is startling new polling data showing Senator Elizabeth Warren vulnerable in her 2018 re-election.

According to WBUR – Boston’s NPR affiliate – “Forty-six percent think voters ought to ‘give someone else a chance’.”

Despite the Bay State’s deep blue leanings, Warren’s favorability rating is a full 8 points lower than Governor Charlie Baker.

How is this possible in a Commonwealth where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a three-to-one ratio? Steve Koczela, president of The MassINC Polling Group that conducted the survey for WBUR, offers a compelling rationale:

“When you look at Elizabeth Warren’s favorables, only 12 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of her,” Koczela said. “When you look at Baker, 60 percent of Democrats view him favorably. So he has bipartisan appeal where Elizabeth Warren really never has.”

In the immediate aftermath of Warren’s 2012 election, she pledged a spirit of bipartisanship, as seen in this appearance on CBS This Morning the day after her victory:

She extended an olive branch to her opponent’s supporters, tempering her feisty middle-class populism with a dose of conciliation: “I understand that there was a message for people who voted for Senator Brown. I think a lot of them were saying, ‘you’ve got to be willing to reach across the aisle,'” explained Warren. “I want them to know I heard that loud and clear, and it’s what I want to do – I don’t want to go to Washington to be able to say, ‘whoa, I’m a senator.’ I want to go to Washington because I want to help get something done.

Since then, Warren has become the Senate’s most liberal partisan, more interested in advancing an extreme left-wing agenda than getting anything done for the Commonwealth she was elected to represent. That’s not sitting well with her constituents, the majority of which are un-enrolled and don’t belong to either political party.

Warren may have her sights set on the 2020 presidential race, but this new poll shows she shouldn’t take the immediate race in front of her for granted.