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Why There Won't Be Exit Polls in Massachusetts

One out of four Massachusetts voters think ACORN will try to steal the election.

By JOHN FUND

The Massachusetts Senate race was a complete snoozer until January 5, when pollster Scott Rasmussen released a survey showing Republican Scott Brown trailing Democrat Martha Coakley by only nine points. That surprised many, but still wasn't a true wake-up call that the race would be a barnburner. As late as January 10, the Boston Globe carried a headline trumpeting a poll showing Ms. Coakley with a 15-point lead. Mr. Brown's surge was so sudden that many of the usual accoutrements of closely-contested elections are missing in the Bay State.

One is exit polls. There will be none tonight from Massachusetts, disappointing journalists and political scientists alike. As Mike Allen of Politico.com reports, the consortium of news outlets that normally organizes such surveys didn't bother when the race was expected to be a blowout and now "wasn't confident a reliable system could be built so fast."

Another casualty of the expectation that the race would be a cakewalk for the Democrat will be an absence of absentee ballot fraud, the preferred method of putting an illegal thumb on the scale in a close race. Applications for absentee ballots had to be submitted by last Friday, providing little opportunity for those with ill intent to organize such an effort once they realized the race had tightened up.

That doesn't mean voters aren't suspicious of electoral fraud in a machine state like Massachusetts. Public Policy Polling, a firm with Democratic connections, included a question over the weekend about the infamous left-wing voter registration group ACORN, which has been linked to fraudulent activities in many states and several of whose members have been sent to jail.

When asked whether "ACORN will try to steal the election for Martha Coakley," a surprising 25% of those surveyed in Massachusetts said "yes." A total of 38% said "no," and another 37% weren't sure.

More . . .

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-- Edited by Sanders on Tuesday 19th of January 2010 04:46:26 PM