CBS4 has released new poll by Survey USA on the Democratic primary. Here are the current results with the April results, also from SUSA, in parentheses:
| Patrick | 36% | (36%) |
| Reilly | 31% | (33%) |
| Gabrielli | 23% | (19%) |
| Undecided | 9% | (11%) |
Looking at the cross tabs, I'm not sure I would go so far as Herald reporter Kim Atkins, who says that Young people love Reilly, poor people like Gabrieli. Keep in mind that the margins of error for those subsamples are 11 and 10.5 respectively. One thing that is statistically significant, is Deval Patrick's 12 point lead over Tom Reilly amongst Democrats. The breakdown for Dems is Patrick 39%, Reilly 27%, Gabrieli 23%, with a MoE of 5.7. This is a steep drop from April for Reilly who had the support of 34% of Democrats in that poll. Reilly does, however, lead among Independents likely to vote in the Democratic primary with 39%, to Patrick's 30% and Gabrieli's 25%, and an MoE of 8.4.
There are things to be happy about for each campaign. Reilly can point to his Independent support, which he actually lost in April. Gabrieli saw his numbers go up slightly since April. While Patrick did not get the kind of convention bump that Shannon O'Brien did four years ago, he can take heart that Gabreili's media campaign has not affected his poll numbers.
One thing that I do want to point out again is the danger of internal polls. If you recall, the Gabrieli campaign released a poll just before the convention showing that Gabreili was leading with 33% of the vote, followed by Reilly and then Patrick. People who are not well versed in polls might think that Gabreili has plummeted ten points since the convention. This is not the case, of course, because the internal poll and the SUSA poll likely had widely different methodologies.
[UPDATE]: A commenter at Blue Mass. Group reminded me of the May SUSA poll which I somehow forgot. Here are the trends, including the May results and the March poll, which did not include Gabrieli:
|