Shock Suffolk University Poll: Brown Surges Past Coakley in Race for 'Ted Kennedy' Seat

You've just won a tough Democrat primary fight. You are now in the general election campaign for the "Ted Kennedy" senate seat in "Massachusettes." So what do you do? Why, go to Disney World!

Okay, so maybe Democrat candidate Martha Coakley didn't go to Disney World but she did take a 6 day vacation in the middle of her campaign for the U.S. Senate on December 23. Why would a candidate do something so foolish? Perhaps because she actually believed the reports in the mainstream media that she was already in possession of the "Ted Kennedy" seat and that the general election on January 19 against her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, was just a mere formality. Here is Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe declaring Coakley the "winner" on December 3:

MARTHA COAKLEY will be the state’s next US senator. Michael Capuano handed her the keys to the late Ted Kennedy’s office by getting caught up in one last dumb shouting match with the sure loser in the race, Stephen Pagliuca. One can only imagine the smile inside Coakley’s head as Capuano and Pagliuca descended into a banter so banal that Pagliuca tried to nail Capuano as the Sarah Palin of the Democratic Party.

One can't blame Jackson alone for his presumption of an automatic Coakley win in the general election. It was an attitude assumed by much of the MSM. However, with just 4 days left until the general election, hard cold reality has hit the Coakley campaign with the results of the latest Suffolk University poll as reported by the Associated Press:

BOSTON (AP) - A new poll in the Massachusetts Senate race shows a shift in favor of the Republican Party and a potential disaster for President Barack Obama and his Democratic political agenda in Tuesday's special election.

The Suffolk University survey released late Thursday showed Scott Brown, a Republican state senator, with 50 percent of the vote in the race to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in this overwhelmingly Democratic state.

Democrat Martha Coakley had 46 percent. That was a statistical tie since it was within the poll's 4.4 percentage point margin of error, but far different from a 15-point lead the Massachusetts attorney general enjoyed in a Boston Globe survey released over the weekend.

The Suffolk poll also confirmed a fundamental shift in voter attitudes telegraphed in recent automated polls that Democrats had dismissed as unscientific and the product of GOP-leaning organizations.

And it signaled a possible death knell for the 60-vote Democratic supermajority the president has been relying upon to stop Republican filibusters in the Senate and pass not only his health care overhaul, but the rest of his legislative agenda heading into this fall's mid-term elections.

Brown has pledged to vote against the health care bill, and his election would give Senate Republicans the 41st vote they need to sustain a filibuster.