WBUR poll: Coakley leads gubernatorial race; Markey looks strong

Our new likely voter poll for WBUR shows Martha Coakley leading Steve Grossman in the Democratic Primary by a 45-14 margin. The rest of the Democratic field is polling in the single digits. Coakley also leads Republican Charlie Baker in the general election by a 41-26 margin. All other Democratic candidates trail Baker in general election match ups.

On the Senate side, Democratic Senator Ed Markey leads a generic Republican challenger 50-29. Name recognition for both of his Republican opponents is extremely low, meaning it is unlikely matching them up against Markey by name would have produced a better result.

Voters have mixed feelings about former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown's new campaign for Senate in New Hampshire. His favorable/unfavorable ratio, while still a net positive 45/35, is much lower than when he was in office, when his favorables often climbed into the 50s and 60s. Most voters (67 percent) still see him as more strongly associated with Massachusetts, and just 40 percent think his run for Senate in Hew Hampshire is a "good idea".

The full WBUR story is here, with toplines and crosstabs.

This telephone poll of 500 likely 2014 general election voters was conducted March 14-16, 2014 via landline and cellular telephone. The margin of sampling error is 4.4%.