With just over a week to go before a special election in Massachusetts, the results of a new Boston Globe poll show Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., with a double-digit lead over Republican businessman and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez in the race to fill Secretary of State John Kerry's old Senate seat.
The poll showed that 54 percent of likely Massachusetts voters support Markey, while 41 percent support Gomez. Just four percent of voters said they remain undecided.
While Markey's lead narrows when including voters that are leaning toward a candidate, the congressman still has a 54 percent to 43 percent advantage.
The Boston Globe noted that Gomez has only a 9 percentage point lead among unenrolled voters, while analysts believe a Republican must win the unenrolled vote by a 2-to-1 margin in order to win in Massachusetts due to the large number of Democrats in the state.
Andrew E. Smith, director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire, which conducted the poll, told the Boston Globe that Gomez will have a tough time generating the kind of finishing kick that helped former Republican Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., upset Martha Coakley in 2010.
"Gomez is not in a bad spot, considering how Democratic the state is,'' Smith said. "But unless he can catch lightning in a bottle like Brown did in the final days, it would be extraordinarily difficult for Gomez to win."
Markey and Gomez will face off in a special election on June 25th, although the winner will only serve until 2014 and will have to run again to seek a full six-year term in the Senate.
The seat is currently filled by William "Mo" Cowan, who Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick appointed to serve as interim senator after Kerry was confirmed as Secretary of State.
The Boston Globe survey of 508 likely Massachusetts voters was conducted June 11th through 14th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
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