The Topline: Can Ocasio-Cortez return the favor for Ayanna Pressley?
Pressley's best endorsement may be from the district, not the Bronx.
Going into the 7th Congressional District debate this week, Boston City Councillor Ayanna Pressley trailed the incumbent Rep. Michael Capuano by 13 points, according to the latest WBUR poll. The debate was less about issues than it was whether voters want experience or a new perspective in Congress. That’s in keeping with the polling: only 19 percent of likely primary voters perceive much of a difference between the candidates on the issues, and are evenly split on whether they value experience or fresh ideas in Washington.
So how will voters decide? Endorsements could make a difference, and on that score, Capuano would seem to be well ahead. At the debate he trumpeted endorsements from fellow Congressman and civil rights pioneer John Lewis, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, as well as the mayors of all the cities in the district.
Pressley has a high-profile endorsement of her own. She backed Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14th Congressional District, who went on to upset Joe Crowley, the fourth highest ranking Democrat in the House. Now Ocasio-Cortez has returned the favor and endorsed Pressley.
But the polling suggests that Ocasio-Cortez may not help Pressley grow her support much beyond its current levels. For one thing, Pressley is better known and better liked than her endorser. Three-quarters of primary voters in the district have heard of Pressley, including 50 percent with a favorable view and 8 percent unfavorable. Only 57 percent of voters have heard of Ocasio-Cortez, 36 percent of whom view her favorably, 6 percent unfavorably.
Among those with a favorable view of the Bronx Democrat, Pressley leads Capuano 46 percent to 35 percent. But among those who have never heard of her or who have no opinion, Capuano leads 55 percent to 29 percent. So a visit from Ocasio-Cortez may help Pressley fire up her supporters to get out and vote, but it may not help her cut into Capuano’s lead.
Even among young voters, the cohort that propelled Ocasio-Cortez to victory, her favorables are roughly in line with Pressley and Capuano. Nor would it appear that Ocasio-Cortez would help Pressley with non-white voters, a demographic where she already holds an 18-point lead over Capuano. Half of non-whites have not heard of Ocasio-Cortez, while just 35 percent hold a favorable view. By comparison, 59 percent of non-whites hold a favorable view of Pressley herself.
The pattern holds in Pressley’s geographic base, Boston. Pressley leads by only 2 percentage points in Boston, 41 percent to 39 percent. If anywhere in the district, this is where a strategic endorsement could pack the biggest punch. But nearly half of Boston voters (46 percent) have never heard of Ocasio-Cortez while 36 percent say they have a favorable opinion. Pressley’s own favorables in Boston are at 61 percent, 25 points higher than her endorser.
It’s not clear whether an Ocasio-Cortez endorsement has helped much in other elections. Only one of the five candidates she endorsed in primaries this week won, although the single victory came in a deep blue Democratic stronghold, like the Seventh. (Ocasio-Cortez rallied for but did not endorse a sixth candidate, who also won in a deep-blue district.)
It may be that another Pressley endorsement will prove more consequential down the stretch. Last week Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey endorsed Pressley. The last time a WBUR poll measured Healey’s favorables, in January 2018, 48 percent of registered Democrats and unenrolled voters in Boston and its inner suburbs had a favorable view of Healey, compared to only 12 percent with an unfavorable view.
Healey’s numbers are likely as good or better with primary voters in the 7th, which includes her home of Charlestown. That’s a neighborhood in the northern part of the district where Pressley will need to trim Capuano’s margin if she hopes to close the gap. With double digits to close and less than a month to go before the primary, Pressley will be happy to have help from both Healey inside the district and from Ocasio-Cortez outside.
-- Maeve Duggan and Rich Parr
EVENT ALERT
Join us at WeWork Beacon Hill on September 5, the night after the primary, for a special Live Winner’s Circle Edition of the Horse Race. Your hosts, MPG’s Steve Koczela and Lauren Dezenski of POLITICO Massachusetts, will recap what just happened and handicap the general election match-ups.
MPG ICYMI
Steve Koczela recorded two audio commentaries drawing on numbers from the WBUR MA7 poll, about the sharp generational divide among primary voters, and the second about the strategic choices facing Democrats trying to retake Congress in the fall.
Steve is on vacation this week, so MAPC’s Lizzi Weyant was back in the Horse Race guest host saddle this week to talk about the end of the legislative session with Andy Metzger, the 7th congressional debate with the Dorchester Reporter’s Jennifer Smith, and the Secretary of State race with Matt Murphy of the State House News Service.
Last week, we recorded not one, but two “bootleg” editions of the Horse Race, so named because of the legislature's failure to renew legal horse racing in the Commonwealth (since corrected). The first looked at races out West and then the Suffolk County District Attorney’s race; the second was a deep dive on the new MA7 poll.
Finally, this week marks the 43rd anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation in the wake of the Watergate. Last year, Steve and Rich Parr looked back at the polling on impeaching Nixon as that scandal unfolded.
THE CROSSTABS
The FiveThirtyEight average of President Trump’s approval rating remains relatively unchanged, with 53 percent disapproval and 41 percent approval. In the congressional race, Democrats hold an 6 point lead.
Pew Research Center takes a longitudinal look at the “very warm” feelings Trump voters have maintained for the President. The New York Times turned two of the questions into a quiz - see if you have misconceptions about Trump loyalists. And for podcast fans out there, today’s episode of The Daily walks through the results.
According to a recent poll by AP-NORC and MTV, young people are feeling empowered to vote and make a difference. Six in ten say that their generation is motivated to make a change in the country, and 79 percent think leaders from their generation would do a “better job running the country.”
Americans are split as to who is responsible for economic growth, according to a recent American Barometer poll.
A recent Gallup poll shows that Americans consider the president's ability to manage the government as the most important factor in evaluating a president. Republicans are more likely than other groups to choose managing the government as the most important factor (42 percent say so), and they are least likely to choose moral values (14 percent).
A new Huffpost/YouGov poll finds that voters who want a Democratic Congress have been more active in politics than Republican supporters. Whether that activity will translate into votes in November remains to be seen.
Pew Research Center investigates why Trump’s approval ratings have been relatively stable and compared to other president’s ratings.
The Boston Globe editorial board endorses ranked choice voting, also known as instant run-off voting, where if no candidate receives a majority, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their votes are reassigned to the second choice on those voters’ ballots.
Meanwhile, our fellow Beacon Hill pollster Suffolk University finds that voters in Maine, the only state that has ranked choice voting, are split along partisan lines about the idea. Suffolk also checks in on Senator Angus King, who looks to be cruising to reelection, and a tied race to succeed the controversial Governor Paul LePage.
And finally, there hasn’t been a recent poll about the Trump administration’s proposed Space Force, but in June, conservative pollster Rasmussen found only a third of Americans supported the idea.
----------------NERD ALERT: SPACE TREK EDITION--------------------------
We don’t think highly of unrepresentative website polls, which so often pop up after political debates or on partisan websites. But in honor of the return of Space Force to the news cycle, and the news that the greatest Star Trek captain is returning to the bridge, we are happy to boldly go, for entertainment purposes only, to this archive of daily Star Trek polls. Live long and prosper.
