Greater than half of doubtless 2026 basic election voters in Massachusetts imagine Gov. Maura Healey must be reelected to a second time period, and one other 51% approve of the job the Arlington Democrat has performed, based on a College of New Hampshire ballot launched Monday.
The ballot confirms what different surveys have constantly proven — Healey holds a cushty approval ranking and is the favourite to win the 2026 governor’s race. The UNH survey additionally makes clear that the 2 Republicans competing to problem Healey are nonetheless unknown amongst voters.
Andrew Smith, the director of the UNH Survey Heart and a political science professor, stated Healey’s approval ranking has elevated from 37% in Could, when UNH final issued a survey on the subject.
“She’s popular enough that she’s above water,” Smith instructed the Herald Tuesday. “As we get closer to the election, you’ll see that the Democrats, unless something dramatically happens, are probably likely to fall in line behind her even if they don’t agree with all the policy positions that she’s taking.”
A spokesperson for Healey’s marketing campaign referred the Herald to the Massachusetts Democratic Occasion. MassDems Occasion Chair Steve Kerrigan stated the ballot confirms “what we already know.”
“Voters know Maura Healey is going to win this race because she’s the only one who can lower costs, deliver on healthcare, reduce energy bills, and stand up to Donald Trump. While the Republicans vie for Trump’s admiration and attention, Maura Healey is delivering real wins for the people of Massachusetts to create a more affordable state and grow our economy,” he stated in an announcement to the Herald.
The ballot surveyed 762 Massachusetts residents via a web based survey between Sept. 17 via Sept. 23, and the margin of error for the survey is 3.6%.
Solely 46% of respondents held a positive opinion of Healey, and one other 39% had an unfavorable opinion, based on the survey. However 77% of Democrats have been favorable of the governor in comparison with 32% of Independents and a couple of% of Republicans, the ballot discovered.
Smith stated Healey is more likely to profit from a midterm election the place the president’s occasion — on this case Republicans underneath President Donald Trump — typically performs poorly.
“Massachusetts is such a Democratic state, it’s going to be very hard for a Democrat to lose, especially in a midterm election with a Republican president,” Smith stated. “Democrats are going to be much more motivated.”
Massachusetts residents are divided on whether or not U.S. Sen. Ed Markey deserves to be reelected, with solely 42% of respondents agreeing that he must be despatched again to Congress for a 3rd time period.
One other 39% stated he shouldn’t be reelected, and 35% of these surveyed held a positive opinion of the 79-year-old, based on the survey.
A spokesperson for Markey didn’t instantly reply to a Herald inquiry.
Smith stated Markey might be in a weak place if Democrats like U.S. Reps. Seth Moulton of Salem or Ayanna Pressley of Boston stepped as much as problem him in subsequent 12 months’s main contest.
“He’s been in office for as long as anybody can remember,” Smith stated. “It’s going to be a challenge. Now, he’s an incumbent. He’s got money. But right now, in American politics, your bigger challenges are in the primaries, not in the general election.”
A majority of doubtless basic election voters have no idea or maintain no opinion on whether or not John Deaton, a Republican who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren final 12 months, ought to run in opposition to Markey in 2026, based on the survey.
Deaton plans to make a last choice about working for Senate in October and has been canvassing political consultants to mount a possible marketing campaign in opposition to Markey, he beforehand instructed the Herald.
Within the nonetheless sleepy Republican gubernatorial main, 31% of doubtless voters within the contest stated they might again Brian Shortsleeve, a enterprise capitalist and former MBTA official, the ballot discovered. One other 22% stated they might help Mike Kennealy, a former cupboard secretary underneath Gov. Charlie Baker.
However almost half, or 47%, of doubtless 2026 Republican main voters stated they have been nonetheless uncertain of who they might vote for subsequent 12 months, the survey discovered.
Shortsleeve rapidly pounced on the findings of the ballot.
“Republican voters support Brian Shortsleeve because he will make Massachusetts affordable for working people with lower taxes and utility fees, ending the spending on the migrant crisis, and repealing the MBTA Communities Act regulations that Mike Kennealy authored,” stated Holly Robichaud, a political strategist working for Shortsleeve.
Brian Wynne, a senior advisor and pollster to Kennealy, attacked the UNH survey’s credibility.
“We put very little stock in a 148-respondent poll that didn’t survey a statistically significant number of respondents in 7 of 14 counties; in particular, the poll doesn’t list respondents in either Norfolk or Suffolk counties, which are the epicenter of the MBTA system that Shortsleeve so disastrously mismanaged,” Wynne stated in an announcement.
This isn’t the primary time Wynne has lashed out at a ballot’s findings. He knocked a survey earlier this month performed by the MassINC Polling Group that discovered 20% of Massachusetts residents strongly approve of Healey’s work, and one other 35% considerably approve of her time in workplace.
The UNH survey pulled responses from 148 doubtless Republican voters with an 8% margin of error for the pattern, based on UNH. Solely respondents from Central Massachusetts, Middlesex, and Southern Massachusetts responded to the query in regards to the Republican main.
Smith, the UNH pollster, acknowledged that the pattern dimension for the query on the Republican main was small however pointed to separate questions on Kennealy and Shortsleeve’s favorability that included responses from 759 individuals all throughout the state.
These questions discovered that the 2 males have been largely unknown amongst doubtless basic election voters.
Smith stated Republican primaries have “a small sample size” as a result of there are “not that many Republicans in the state.”
“I think that may be a legitimate thing there. It’s just a small number of people. Going back and looking at it, I might have just said, ‘let’s not publish those numbers.’ It’s just small numbers,” Smith stated in response to Wynne’s assertion. “I wouldn’t be terribly concerned about it. But my sense is that (Kennealy and Shortsleeve are) still not going to be well known.”
