Warren opens small lead over Brown in latest Mass. poll

Consumer protection advocate Elizabeth Warren has opened a small lead over incumbent Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in the Bay State’s high-profile Senate race, a rebound for Warren after a pair of polls last month showed Brown nearing a double-digit lead.

Warren was the choice of 46 percent of Massachusetts voters surveyed, while Brown garnered the support of 41 percent, according to the Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling.

Warren’s advantage comes from making headway with independents in the heavily Democratic state. Brown only leads Warren 48 percent to 36 percent among those who do not affiliate with a party, down from his 2-to-1 advantage over former Democratic nominee Martha Coakley in 2010. The centrist Brown will need to improve his margins among swing voters while holding on to his Republican base — 9 out of 10 GOP members plan to vote for his reelection — to stay competitive.

“Warren is reclaiming the middle from Brown,” PPP Director Tom Jensen wrote Tuesday. “We find her up 42-40 with moderate voters, a group that we found Brown leading Coakley 55-41 with. She’s also inspiring a lot of enthusiasm from young people. 56% rate her favorably to 27% with an unfavorable view, and she leads Brown 56-29 with them.”

The poll also found that slightly more than half of Massachusetts voters describe the Harvard professor’s views as “about right,” compared to 44 percent for Brown. Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said they think the Republican Party is too conservative, while 4 in 10 said Democrats are too liberal.

But while the poll’s results will undoubtedly offer a moment of relief for the Warren campaign, it represents a large swing from an Opinion Dynamics poll late last month that showed Brown with a 10-point lead and a Western New England University poll in early March that favored the incumbent by 8 points. Those surveys came before a controversial Republican vote that would have overturned an Obama administration rule requiring employers to provide free access to contraception, and underscore the volatility in the race. The Hill continues to rate the race a toss-up.

---