Episode 228: All things in moderation

9/8/2022--- On this week's episode the team breaks down the results of the primaries in Massachusetts and who will be going head to head on the ballot in November.

Steve discusses the significance of name ID in getting elected and how polling comes into play during primaries. Jenn also runs through the results of down ballot elections mentioned on previous episodes. Tune in for the full list of results and what these victories and losses could imply in the state.

Full Transcript Below:

Jennifer Smith: [00:00:25] This week on The Horse Race. The votes are in most of them anyway. And we're breaking down the results of this week's primary election. It's Thursday, September 8th. [00:00:34][8.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:18] Welcome back to The Horse Race, your weekly look at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Steve Koczela here with Jennifer Smith and Lisa Kashinsky. And we are here breaking down the huge events of the week. No, that's not the two part Bachelor Fantasy Suite episodes. We are, in fact, talking about the Massachusetts primaries, which happened on Tuesday this week. [00:01:38][20.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:38] I assume that everyone saw about the extent of it that our dear Lisa Kashinsky did, which is whatever was playing in the background of all of the election night parties, apparently. [00:01:49][10.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:01:50] So good news for WCVB. Everyone turned on Channel five ABC to get their primary results. But what that was at 8 p.m. when all the parties started was The Bachelorette. But there was no sound. So all you saw was people hugging and I'm assuming crying. At some point I did have to stop paying attention to, like, watch actual candidates, deliver actual speeches, live in front of my face. But yeah, I mean, at Healy's party, at Andrea's party, I heard like there was The Bachelorette playing. Silently. [00:02:24][33.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:02:24] It seems fitting. It seems like you should know at this point if you listen to the horse race that if you want the Boston press corps to show up, you will have The Bachelorette playing because that's what they're watching on Monday and Tuesday night. That's why they buy their ads that way, and that's why they choose their election night television programing. [00:02:41][16.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:02:41] I'm convinced I am waiting for just an incredible rundown of every single candidate who won and lost any election yesterday, commenting on how they feel about these six men whose names we barely know and their emotional statuses. I assume that was what most of them ran on in the first place. Am I wrong? No. [00:03:04][23.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:03:05] And just to be clear, I cannot name any of the are there still six of them left? And like I watched the show every week to some extent, and I think there's a Tino so, like, I. [00:03:19][14.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:03:20] Think one of them has a mullet. [00:03:21][1.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:03:21] Really? I think I missed that. So like Tino for president, I guess because, like, we're talking politics here. So, I don't know, maybe that was the question I should have asked everyone last night was like, who is your favorite Bachelorette contestant and why? [00:03:36][14.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:03:37] Well, you know what? Finalists that I know that we can name are the ones who won in the Massachusetts primary elections booth. [00:03:44][6.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:03:44] Steve Boo [00:03:46][1.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:03:48] I brought it back there. That does actually, though I would love to spend 20 or 30 minutes walking through the entire very confusing season of dual bachelorettes. That brings us to the question that we like to ask, which is why are we actually here? [00:04:01][13.1]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:02] Well, we are, as you said, walking, waiting, running, skipping through the results of this week's primary races and looking ahead to what's now a what is it, nine week sprint to the general election in November. [00:04:15][13.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:04:16] We're going to be really tired. [00:04:16][0.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:17] Already tired. [00:04:17][0.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:18] Shall we go? Shall we march? Shall we skip? [00:04:20][2.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:04:21] Let's ride for writing. [00:04:22][1.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:04:25] The results are in after the long awaited, closely watched, hotly contested. I don't know what other cliches we want to use. Massachusetts primaries. We were all up late last night. Few of us later than the poor folks in Barnstable and early this morning keeping close track of what happened in our usual tradition. We're going to begin at the top of the ticket and work our way down. So Governor is up first. Lisa, are you ready to start us off? [00:04:51][26.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:52] So, yeah. So surprise, surprise. Maura Healey is the Democratic nominee for governor. She finally got to drop the presumptive that she's had since the end of June from the front of that title and she is running against Donald Trump endorsed conservative former state representative Jeff Deal. That is also not a super surprising result. He had long been the favorite to win that primary. He had won the state party's endorsement at its convention back in May. There was some action towards the end, though, that made it look like this could have been, you know, a close race, maybe gone another way. Howie Carr, you know, as many of you know exactly who he is. I don't have to explain that he had come out and said, you know, don't vote for Jeff Dale, vote for Chris Doughty because Chris Doughty and how his belief was the one who could stand the best chance against Moore Healey. You know, in that case, in what would have been kind of more of a race to the middle as opposed to a referendum on Donald Trump's legacy, which is kind of what we have now. You know, who knows the real story behind that one? There was, you know, some talk that it came after Diehl wouldn't participate in a second debate on how we show, etc., etc.. So we'll see. But yes, so our race at the top of the ticket is finally set. [00:06:13][81.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:06:14] Well, Lisa, kind of looking at the Healey side of things, it was interesting going through how dominant her performance was because even though it was basically just Maura Healey as the lone still running human being on the Democratic side, some 100,000 people still voted on the Democratic side for Sonia Chang-Diaz. So obviously 85% is just mostly everyone voting for Maura Healey as the Democratic nominee. But it is still interesting that after all of this time, there's still a bit of appetite or resentment, I think, at seeing the race narrow so quickly. So, again, some hundred thousand people saw some other names on their ballot and went, fine, fine. Then I'm still voting for someone else just to make a point. [00:07:00][46.1]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:07:01] Yeah. I actually asked Maura Healey about this in Worcester on Wednesday, not necessarily directly about Sonia Chang-Diaz, but there were progressives who had been endorsed by major groups, you know, progressive Massachusetts, Our Revolution, Massachusetts, like Sonia Chang-Diaz and others who either didn't make it to primary night or lost. And in some cases lost pretty badly on Tuesday night. And I asked her, what do you say to those progressives who wanted another candidate, whether it was for governor, you know, whether it was over policy or something else? And she said, you know, that she understands, you know, why they wanted someone else, but, you know, now is the time to come together. And, you know, she's already kind of painting this as the big again referendum on Trump and just kind of the divisiveness and the extremism and the rhetoric of, you know, politics today and kind of doing that a little bit. Charlie Baker asks, you know, playing to the bipartisanship, you know, the kind of old way of politicking that is falling by the wayside in today's politics and just kind of asking people to set aside their differences and really rally around her so Democrats can take back the corner office. [00:08:15][73.9]

Steve Koczela: [00:08:16] And Lisa, you pointed out this morning in Playbook that none of the candidates that progressive Massachusetts or our revolution endorsed actually won their statewide elections, which I think is evidence of the moderate mood of that electorate this entire cycle. We've seen in our polling, for instance, that voters pretty much want candidates that are some somewhere in the same realm as Baker. 70% of Democratic primary voters still hold a favorable view of Baker. More than half say that if Baker had ac tually endorsed somebody, it would make them more likely to support that Democrat. These are Democrats talking about the Republican governor. So, you know, we get painted in with sort of a caricature like brush, I think, by political observers outside of Massachusetts. But the truth of the matter is, you know, the median Democrat in Massachusetts is not that liberal. They're not a member of progressive Massachusetts or our revolution. And we saw that come into sharp focus, I think, last night. [00:09:09][53.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:09:10] And the other race with governor in the title, but a bit less enthusiasm behind it. We have Kim Driscoll, who has won the Democratic nomination for the lieutenant governor race. So she and Maura Healey are already out hitting the campaign trail. Lisa, walk us through how that came down in the end. [00:09:28][17.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:09:29] So pulling in showed that Kim Driscoll had pulled ahead of her two other rivals for Lieutenant Governor Eric Lesser and Tammy Gouveia. And that's how it shook out in the end. She won with about 47% of the vote, did really well in, you know, kind of just everything in eastern Massachusetts over past Worcester, where you got into western Massachusetts, which is where State Senator Eric Lesser is from. Tammy Gouveia, of course, did well in kind of her little Metro West pocket around Acton, where she's from. And yeah, so Kim Driscoll, I had mentioned Worcester earlier. She was there with Maura Healey on Wednesday afternoon doing a kind of small business walk through the Worcester Public Market. It was their first appearance together as a team. There were a lot of basketball references. They are both basketball players. So if you had already heard a lot of basketball references from Healey, get ready to hear a lot more of them because it is very clear that that will be a part of their campaign messaging. I mean, Healey slogan is literally, my governor is a baller. And now you can also say that about her running mate. So that race actually got called relatively early on last night. But on the Republican side, that race has stretched into this morning where it was really close to call between lyrical Allen, who was Jeff Daniels, you know, so-called running mate back before running mates were really a thing. And Kate Campanile, who was Christie's running mate. In the end, Leah did pull it out. So Geoff does get to continue with his chosen running mate, you know, in in what ended up being one of the tighter races that we saw out of Tuesday night's primaries. And so, yeah, they're off to the races. [00:11:09][100.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:11:10] So what we do end up seeing here just because of of that coincidence is two tickets that are pretty consistent, platform wise between the person at the top and their running mate here. There would have been a bit of discrepancy in approach if Lia had not pulled it out in the end. But then, of course, Maura Healey and Kim Driscoll are pretty much aligned on all of the major issues and policies. And on the other side, we've got a pretty informed by Trump side of the ticket that also has been marked by resistance to often COVID safety protocols across the state. So I guess it's one upside for voters, which is you have a pretty clear distinction depending on where you fall on some of these very top line statewide issues. [00:12:02][51.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:12:03] One of the other things worth noting on this particular race and several of the other races really is how little known the candidates actually were. So we've been asking favorability, which is a way to both find out how much voters know the candidates as well as how much they like them. You can read a candidate favorably. Unfavorably, you can sample. Heard of them but don't have a view or I've just never heard of that person entirely. And even at the very end, we had just 23% saying they had either positive or negative views of Kim Driscoll, who actually won the contest. And that's that's higher still than Eric Lesser, for whom it was 20%. And Tammy Gouveia for her that was 11% who had an either positive or negative view. That actually also echoes similar dynamics that happened in the auditor's race. Tanisha Sullivan, running in the secretary of state's race, also had very little name recognition. So all around, you know, a lot of candidates kind of running in anonymity. That's not necessarily a new phenomenon. I dug out a poll that we did back in October of 2014. Yes, way back in ancient history, where we actually named the two nominees at that time, Steve Kerrigan and later LG, Karyn Polito, and said, you know, do you know what these these candidates are running for? And we found that only 35%, even in October, knew what the nominees were actually running for. So not a new phenomenon, but still just it's always amazing to think, you know, how little known these candidates who have been pouring their life or their energy into this are to voters statewide. [00:13:35][91.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:13:36] Well, speaking of a bit of a name recognition roller coaster in polling over the past election cycle, the attorney general's race here looked like it was really narrowing toward the end between Andrea Campbell and Shannon Liss-Riordan. And when it all came down to it this week, we saw 50% of the state voted for Campbell and 33.9 voted for LISS-RIORDAN. So what impact did Quenntin Palfrey kind of pivoting over to the Campbell side of it have when you were looking at those polling numbers, Steve, because he had been way, way, way below the other candidates in terms of name recognition, even though he technically came out of the convention as the nominee. [00:14:22][45.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:14:23] Yeah. I mean, there's some things we can know and some things we can't, you know? And our very last poll done in August, kind of even as early voting was starting, starting up, he still had double digit support. So, you know, his voters were a pretty good chunk of the electorate and he did then go right over and endorse Andrea Campbell. So I think that there's it's definitely a strong possibility that he did have an impact there. I think it's also possible that some of the voters that had already cast their ballots for him early may have actually voted for Shannon Liss-Riordan if he hadn't been in when they'd cast their ballot. So you could kind of look at it either way if there were any way. And that's to my knowledge, there is no way. But if there were to look at who voted for whom by day, you know, early vote versus on Election Day, I think that would be fascinating. But there's sadly, there is no way to do that that I know of. [00:15:14][50.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:15:15] Well, that's what's so, I guess, compelling, which is that he actually performed better in the Democratic primary matchup than he actually had been in the polling. And, of course, there were plenty of people who were undecided even in those polls. So there's there's a lot more shifting than just this person controls 30% of all voters. And in fact, when it came down to it on primary day, he actually overperformed his polling numbers. They're getting about 15.7% of the total. So it did ultimately look like about half of the voters when, you know, push came to shove did come down on Campbell's side. Lisa, how did she respond in the election night party scene post-election? How was she taking it? And how were the Liss-Riordan and Palfrey campaigns taken it? [00:16:07][52.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:16:08] So Andrea, of course, was, as you can imagine, incredibly emotional. I mean, she was wiping tears from her eyes, you know, at various points throughout her speech, breaking out in huge grins the next day. I mean, this is a remarkable turnaround for her. After finishing third just a year ago in the preliminary for the Boston mayor's race to now be headed towards being the next attorney general. And, you know, historically, the first black woman elected attorney general, if she beats Jim McMahon in in November, like she was expected to. And so she said, for all of those who have felt unseen, this victory is for you. For all of those who have felt marginalized, this victory is for you. And in a little dig at some of those progressive groups that had first backed Quentin Palfrey and then gotten behind Shannon when he dropped out Shannon Liss-Riordan. She also said for all those who felt retraumatized by not all but some progressives, this victory is for you and shameless. Riordan You know, despite pouring at least $9.3 million of her own money into her campaign, we don't know yet what she might have put in in September. That's only through the end of August. So it could be even more than that, you know, had absolutely blanketed the airwaves, more than 5.5 million and ads flooded people's mailboxes. And she, you know, came up pretty short on Tuesday night. And, you know, she really believed that she was the candidate. You know, she has decades of experience that. And she had really just kind of tried to shove her down people's throats through advertising in the end. And it did. It just didn't work. [00:17:47][99.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:17:49] It worked in, I think, a narrow sense, which is that it vastly increased her name ID, you know. We saw her name ID go from the June poll that we did to the August poll. It just kind of went vertical. It was like, you know, she was bumping along kind of down with some other candidates in the low double digits, even single digits. And then suddenly she's up, you know, with more than a third of voters who say that they'd heard of her. You know, that doesn't sound like much, but she actually came in pretty close to Andrea Campbell when it comes to name recognition, by the time we got to early August. So those mountains of mailers, you know that I know you all major clip art with and that you've also graciously mailed us. You know, that's the stuff that that really did it are name I.D. that the Instagram ads, the TV ads, the radio ads, the ads and literally every media and forum available. [00:18:36][46.6]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:18:37] Yeah, even at the end, I was seeing it on newspaper websites. I was seeing, you know, advertisements with her and Elizabeth Warren, you know, pictured together. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it definitely did increase her name ID It just wasn't enough in the end. [00:18:49][12.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:18:50] And then pivoting over to one that you had mentioned earlier, Steve, when it comes to name I.D., the secretary of state's race, Bill Galvin, is triumphant again in a primary challenge. He has been strong in the past and was strong again this time and handily beat out Tunisia. Sullivan, who is yet another progressive running for one of these statewide offices. So in a surprising pivot for our listeners, I'm not asking Lisa first. Steve, what are your main takeaways here from Bill Galvin's? Again, pretty dominant performance. And what are you watching in November? [00:19:30][39.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:19:30] I mean, not this race particularly closely, I don't think, you know, for November, but in terms of what the takeaways were, it's that, you know, Bill Gavin looking all the way back to 2018 when we first did the first poll on him and Josh Seccombe, who was his challenger at that point, it was like people know who this guy is. They see his face all the time on anything having to do with elections. His name, his face is plastered on literally everything, every available surface online and in three dimensional space that he controls or has access to. So that has translated into very high name recognition relative for a secretary of state's race, 47% favorables in the last poll and 9% unfavorables. So that also says that people not only know who he is, but they actually like him or hold a favorable view of him as an office holder. On Tanisha Sullivan struggled in that regard. You know, she struggled to get people to pay attention to the race. They weren't really looking for someone to replace Bill Galvin. So there just wasn't a whole lot of attention given there. You know, there were some media stories that gained, I think, insider and media attention, but they didn't move the needle at all in terms of her name recognition among the broader electorate. [00:20:43][73.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:20:44] She also never went on air. Bill Galvin aired two ads. You know, he had a much larger war chest than she did. And, you know, she put out a digital ad at the end. But for someone who was coming in, I believe this was her first political race. And to just not be able to go up on the air against someone who has decades of institutional institutionalized name recognition is definitely difficult. But at the same time, to put up almost 30% in your first statewide run and to have endeared yourself to a lot of party activists bodes well for her political future somewhere else. [00:21:21][37.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:21:23] And let's end our statewide run through with the most competitive race of them all in the Democratic primaries side, actually, where Diana dog Leo pulled a win over Chris Dempsey for state auditor 54 to 45.9. Lisa, is this the one that was most interesting to you? Surprising to you, the biggest upset? How would you actually frame this? [00:21:47][24.5]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:21:49] I think if we had to pick a race that was the biggest upset, it would be this one because Chris Dempsey had all of that, you know, so-called elusive, whatever you want to term it as momentum going into primary day. He had the big name endorsements. He had the current auditor, Suzanne bomb, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, big people at the state House backing him over. Diana DiZoglio, who's a sitting state senator, though, of course, has routinely bucked leadership on Beacon Hill. So that wasn't that surprising. But this is one of those races that really showed that Twitter and, you know, the Democratic convention, which Dempsey won the endorsement for auditor at the convention, doesn't always translate into real life. Jane, it is ugly. I had a lot of labor union support and she worked it across the state. I mean, they both did. But it's some of those things that kind of fly a little bit more under the radar, especially kind of in Twitter, you know, where you're seeing a lot of activists and in media that really shaped how this race played out. [00:22:50][61.5]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:22:51] Does this year fill you with kind of hope, dread? What is it when looking actually at how effective these state conventions are at this point in predicting the outcome of these races, where when you're coming to kind of look at these contested statewide races, they did correctly call for Kim Driscoll and she did, in fact, win. But then Tanisha got the endorsement, Quentin got the endorsement and Chris got the endorsement, and none of them did, in fact, pull out the primaries. So is this indicating a disconnect between the state party infrastructure and the way folks are voting? Or is there something else going on? Is this an indication that there is not really an organizing capacity to it? Or is it actually just generally being out of step with the electorate? [00:23:40][49.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:23:42] One of the things in talking to some, you know, progressive activists over the past few days is that it's easier to organize when you're trying to reach a smaller audience. And so going through the caucuses and having to organize to such a limited group, you know, a few thousand party activists versus a much wider electorate, you know, you can really reach people and have, you know, substantive policy discussions and things like that, as opposed to having 30 seconds in a TV commercial to kind of just introduce yourself and say who you are. And because the caucuses and the convention, it wasn't until June and the primary is in, you know, September, you have to do this like hard reset going into the summer when people start paying attention. So you spent all this time focused on a select group of people all the way through the spring when people might be paying attention. And then suddenly you pivot to everything else you have to do to win a campaign. And people have tuned out. They're gone. You know, they come back at school, it's move and it rains and it reduces turnout, you know, any number of factors. And yeah, and that's that is one of the challenges. It is actually is something that Danielle Allen kind of hit on when she dropped out of the governor's race back in, I believe, February. So, yeah, and it kind of contributes to that feeling that we get, you know, every time conventions roll around. That convention doesn't always translate, isn't always real life. You know, again, Josh Zakim and Bill Galvin in 2018 is an example and then everything this year. [00:25:13][91.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:25:15] It also results in some candidates not even making it through at all. You know, when we saw that this year, that we've seen that in past years, you know, with gubernatorial candidates and candidates kind of moving on down the ballot, you know, who just don't even make it out of the convention at all. They don't get the percent that they need. The thing that I think sticks out to me about that is just that it's the parties. Truest believers are the ones who come to the convention, you know, perhaps second only to those who are on the state committee, perhaps, you know, thinking of the mass GOP, for instance. Jeff Deal won 70% of the convention and then, you know, won 55% on Election Day. He still won, but definitely not as not like he did at the convention. And, you know, the party's true insiders, the, you know, members of the state committee and so forth, would probably even be even more, you know, kind of committed to that cause based on what we've seen and read from the great Massachusetts political playbook. So then moving on to November, this is one which actually may continue. Of course, he's running against Republican Anthony Amore, who's got the backing of Governor Charlie Baker. It's the only statewide race in which Baker is so far involved. So. What are the chances, Lisa, that this one could actually be competitive? [00:26:23][68.5]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:26:25] Well, I definitely can't wait to see your polling and what it says about that when it comes out. But, yeah, I mean, Anthony Amore is you know, he's failed in a statewide bid before for secretary of state in 2018, but he's really wild liked by kind of like the broader ideological swath of Republicans, like he's able to pull conservatives and moderates. And, you know, Diana DiSalvo is a bit more of a moderate Democrat, especially given the district that she's from. So if you're looking at, you know, a race to the middle, this could get really interesting. And especially if, you know, Governor Charlie Baker is going to come out, continue to come out for Anthony and worry. You know, his spokesperson told me and other reporters today that he and Lieutenant Governor Karen Polito do not plan on getting involved in the governor's race, which does free him up more to stump for auditor. [00:27:16][51.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:27:17] And then a race that was surprisingly high profile, given that it's one of the local ones, is, of course, the controversial Suffolk County district attorney's race. Ultimately, 54% of Suffolk County voters picked Kevin Haydon, the incumbent interim district attorney, to continue at the Post. City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who is challenging him for that, got about 46% of the vote and conceded today. This was a really, really difficult, ugly race, especially in the past few weeks. And so it leaves, I think, a lot of questions here around the controversies that dogged both of them. There are a lot of progressives with a bunch of sore feelings, not just in the Suffolk County D.A. race, but also in other district attorney races where progressives, like, for instance, Andrea Harrington, are no longer going to be on the ballot in November, where, of course, they usually would not face any kind of challenge on the Republican side. So for Kevin Hayden, he's been facing a lot of questions even just in the last day or so from people saying, well, there was a lot of controversy around how the transit police case that we broke down a few episodes ago is going to be handled. And what, if anything, will change under his leadership during a full elected term, particularly because an area of real concern is what would happen to Rachel Rollins's legacy in the office now that she is multiple terms out of it. Lisa This was a pretty difficult race, especially as it wrapped up in the end. What are the lingering questions that you still have when it comes to the local implications? [00:28:59][101.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:29:00] This race really exposed a lot of fault lines that we knew were there in both Boston politics on the city council where Ricardo Arroyo serves. And, you know, a lot of times after, you know, a Democratic primary, people can kind of, you know, put aside their differences, you know, in a in a less contentious race and kind of come together, you know, saw that a little bit after Kennedy, Markey, that type of thing. But this doesn't feel like this is just going to go away. These exposed some really, really deep, painful, personal, racial, ideological, pretty much every thing that you can think of, you know, divides in Boston. And, you know, the city council still meets Riccardo is still a city councilor. Kevin Hayden is still a sitting district attorney. And this isn't going away. [00:29:53][52.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:29:54] Yeah. My guess is any Boston politics watchers are going to be in for probably a lot more of the increasingly combative council meetings that we've been seeing recently, whether some city councilors leave their offices or decide to really go after some particular type of reform that might bring them into conflict with the. Are other councilors or the mayor. So we'll see how that goes. Let's take a quick tour. If you folks are interested through some down ballot races that we had talked about in prior episodes, how's that sound? [00:30:27][32.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:30:28] We are interested, Jenn, and you as the foremost leading expert on down ballot races in Boston. And there were a lot of them there were a lot of kind of interesting ones going on. So what were some ones that you paid particularly close attention to? [00:30:41][13.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:30:42] All right. Let's run through these expeditiously. State rep Liz Miranda came out on top of the second Suffolk State Senate seat. So that is a lot of S's. And it was also to replace State Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz. So Liz Miranda came out on top of a four person race for that. She will be replaced in the fifth Suffolk District with Chris Worrell, who is the brother of speaking in the Boston City Council, a city councilor, Brian Murrell of District four. And you get Elgato, who is the sitting state rep for the 15th Suffolk District, will no longer be in office in January because she was also running for the second Suffolk seat. She will be replaced by Sam Montano. Rep Russell Holmes fended off a challenge, a pretty unusual challenge in the sixth Suffolk District. And then hear me out. There are even some races outside of Boston that we've been paying attention to. So as a quick run through on some that might ring a bell in your head. In the first Worcester Senate race, Mayor Joe Perry went down to Robyn Kennedy. Jacob Oliviera will replace Senator Eric Lesser in the first Hamden and Hampshire district. A super busy eighth Essex Rep race ended with Jenny Army taking a six way Democratic primary to replace Lori Erlich, who went to take a post with FEMA and also a capper on the race that good bf of the pod katie lan and ran us through a few weeks ago. Rady mom will keep her seat in the 18th Middlesex District race, again, beating out challengers as he heads to a fifth term. But that brings us out of some of the races that we've been following to the real mystery slash inconvenience of voting day aside from the rain, which is a Barnstable vault. What was going on there? [00:32:26][104.1]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:32:27] It wouldn't open. [00:32:29][1.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:29] That that seems to be the thing that would go wrong with a vault. [00:32:32][2.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:33] Yeah. And it was, you know, the town clerk was like it had opened the night before. Everything was fine. And then they got there bright and early on Tuesday morning and the vault would not open. So they basically got a bunch of paper ballots, did it? Old school got them out to the polls. Secretary of State Bill Galvin got a court order to allow the polls to stay open in Barnstable until midnight. And yeah, eventually they got the vault open. [00:33:04][31.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:33:05] That's very exciting and also kind of inconvenient because on top of statewide races, there were also, you know, active local races that people were trying to vote. And at the time, there was a Republican primary for the Cape and Islands D.A. race. Dan Higgins has since been declared the winner on that side and he'll face Democrat Robert Galba in November. And this brings us to the segment, the period, the moment that I'm sure Steve has been waiting for his soul, a fire, his eyes aflame. People are wondering. They have questions about polling. Steve, did the polls blow it? Do people not understand how polls work? [00:33:44][38.5]

Steve Koczela: [00:33:44] I mean, it depends on what you want polls to do. And if you want them to show you that most people don't know who the candidates are and don't know who they're going to vote for with two weeks to go, then I think they did that, you know, and we said I said everybody said on this podcast many times that that's true. People don't know who the candidates are and that even when they do, they often make up their mind at the last minute in these races. So I think that it's not really surprising that a snapshot taken when 70% hadn't heard of the candidates didn't accurately predict the margin. When, you know, more than half of the voters that even responded didn't know who they were going to vote for. So if the original poll is say, you know, 18 to 14 and the rest are undecided, to expect the final margin to be a four point margin is doesn't really make any sense. So I hear what people are saying. I think that it did show that, you know, Shannon Liss-Riordan grew and showed that in the race where voters didn't know who the candidate was. Bill Galvin He was way ahead. But in the ones where there was just a huge amount of uncertainty, I think that is the main feature that the polls showed. So expecting primary polls with 70%, 60% don't know, never heard of to accurately predict the margin, I think, is not really what I was expecting them to do. [00:34:57][73.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:34:58] Well, you mentioned the last minute, and that's where we are. We're out of time for today, actually. We will be off for the next two weeks, but we will be returning to your ears on September 29th. For now, I'm Lisa Kashainsky, signing off with Steve Koczela and Jennifer Smith. Our producer is Elena Eberwein. Don't forget to give the horse race a review wherever you're hearing us now, subscribe to my Massachusetts Politico playbook and reach out to the MassINC Polling Group for polls. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon. [00:34:58][0.0]

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