By Heidi Przybyla and Michael McDonald
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Massachusetts voters trekked through the snow in large numbers to vote in a special U.S. Senate election that will determine whether Democrats keep the 60 votes they’ve needed to pass legislation in the chamber.
William Galvin, the Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth, told CNN this afternoon that the state was experiencing a “wonderful turnout, despite the weather.”
In Boston, voting as of 3 p.m. local time was running close to the turnout in the November 2006 mid-term election, said Brian McNiff, spokesman for Galvin’s office.
In just more than a week, Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley, once considered almost a sure bet, has watched her lead in opinion polls evaporate over Republican state Senator Scott Brown in a race to fill the seat of the late Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. Coakley led by more than 30 percentage points in surveys last November.
“In some ways, Republicans have already won,” said Jennifer Duffy, the Senate analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington. “Nobody ever imagined a special election in Massachusetts for Ted Kennedy’s seat would ever get remotely competitive.”
The television networks and the Associated Press aren’t conducting exit polls through a group known as the National Election Pool, said Cathie Levine, a spokeswoman for ABC News. If the race is close, the lack of exit polling data often used to project a winner may delay news of the results after polls close at 8 p.m. local time.
Voter Turnout
McNiff said 81,882 out of about 359,000 registered voters in Boston had cast ballots as of 3 p.m., compared with 87,748 people in November 2006. In November 2008, with a presidential race that typically increases turnout, 152,000 votes were cast in Boston by 3 p.m.
President Barack Obama flew to Massachusetts on Jan. 17 to rally Democrats, saying his party’s priorities would be threatened by Brown, who has pledged to vote against Democratic health-care legislation and a proposed fee on large financial institutions.
The National Weather Service forecast about an inch of snow today in Boston.
“It hurts Coakley because her voters aren’t as committed,” Duffy said of the weather. “Brown’s voters are going to come out in a blizzard.”
Research “strongly suggests” that Brown, 50, will defeat Coakley, 56, the Washington-based nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report said.
Independents Are Key
A high turnout historically favors Democrats, said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. In today’s contest, though, “the key is what’s the turnout of independents,” who usually aren’t as likely to vote as registered Democrats or Republicans, he said. “A big turnout of independents probably favors Brown.”
While Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-to-1 in the state, 51 percent of voters aren’t registered with a party.
Edwin Betancourt, 39, a Democrat from Boston, said he voted for Brown because the Republican ran a more positive campaign.
“He showed more leadership than Martha Coakley,” Betancourt said. “She thought the election was won. She disappeared after the primary.”
60 Votes
Counting Massachusetts Senator Paul Kirk, who was appointed to fill Kennedy’s seat on an interim basis, Democrats control 60 Senate votes, the minimum they need to block Republican efforts to kill legislation, such as the proposal to expand health coverage and slow rising health-care costs.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Managed Health-Care Index of six stocks rose 3.7 percent today, its biggest jump in more than a month. The 11-member S&P 500 Pharmaceuticals Index rose 2.2 percent, the most in almost seven months.
The tightening Massachusetts race has drawn national political groups into the fray. Obama appears in a new television ad for Coakley, and his grassroots organizing group says it placed 93,000 calls across the state on Jan. 16 alone.
The Tea Party Express, which opposes Obama’s health-care plan, said it has spent more than $300,000 supporting Brown. The National Rifle Association put almost $20,000 behind Brown.
Service Employees International Union groups reported on Jan. 13 spending almost $740,000 to back Coakley.
“The whole nation’s watching what’s happening in Massachusetts,” Coakley told supporters in Boston on Jan. 15.
Health Care
Even if Brown wins, Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress will push forward on the president’s health-care plan, said Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican.
“They are already gaming out how to pass this health-care bill should Senator Brown win,” Gregg said in a Bloomberg Radio interview this morning.
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs repeatedly declined to address questions about how the outcome of the Massachusetts vote would affect health-care legislation or whether the administration could have done more on Coakley’s behalf.
“These are all going to be great questions tomorrow,” Gibbs said.
Brown has cast himself as a populist and political outsider in a state with abuse-of-power scandals involving Democratic lawmakers including a former speaker of the House, Salvatore DiMasi, who has pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges.
“I’m running in the name of every independent-thinking voter to take on the political machine and their candidate,” Brown says in a recent Web advertisement.
Bank Fees
Democrats took aim at Brown’s opposition to Obama’s plan to tax the largest financial firms, including Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp., to recoup losses from companies that got federal aid from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.
“Bankers don’t need another vote in the United States Senate -- they’ve got plenty,” Obama said in Boston, signaling a broader political strategy to tie Republicans in this year’s races to Wall Street greed.
Brown has said banks will pass on the cost of Obama’s proposed tax to consumers in the form of higher fees.
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