Could we see a miracle in Massachusetts?

Perhaps. Scott Brown is surging in the polls. Never mind the one just released by the Boston Globe showing Coakley up by 15 points.

William Jacobson looked at the numbers, and checked out the other polls and sees this as a really tight race.

 The UNH poll released this morning by The Boston Globe, showing a safe 15% lead by Coakley among likely voters, does not ring true to me. UNH started polling on January 2 and finished January 6. Rasmussen, which polled during that same time period, showed Coakley up by 9% among likely voters but only 2% among definite voters. PPP polled more recently and showed Brown up by 1%. The Boston Herald is to release a poll which reportedly will show Coakley with a 1% lead among likely voters. [Note added: Jules Crittenden disputes that there is a pending Boston Herald poll.]

The UNH-Globe poll is an outlier, by far. The three other polls show this as a single digit race among likely voters, with Brown’s voters far more highly motivated. [Added] Even the UNH-Globe polls shows that among the voters who are listed as “extremely interested in election” it is an even race, at 47% each.

All the polls could be wrong, as they were in New Hampshire, but we have what we have, and it appears to show a close race with a small advantage to Coakley.

TPM providers further insight.

So what explains this crazy spread? One thing to note is that the PPP poll is a bit more recent, though seemingly not enough to explain the huge spread. At least not all of it. Another interesting thing about the two polls is that they’re not that far off on Coakley’s number: PPP has her at 47% and the Globe has her at 53%. The difference is in Brown’s number — 48% vs. 36%. As I said, I think the whole story here is that screen the two pollsters are using to see who’s is going to vote.

Now PPP is actually a Democrat-associated firm. So while I think I think they’re top-notch, no one who’s inclined to be suspicious should have any thought that they’re somehow biased in favor of Republican candidates.

How have they done recently? Well, we have two races to look at. PPP came out with a raft of polls just before the November special election and noted that they were seeing a much more Republican electorate than other pollsters were. They picked up the fact that Christie was starting to surge in the last couple days in New Jersey — they had Christie up by 6 points. But they also had Doug Hoffman clobbering Bill Owens by 17 points in their final poll, even though Owens won.

All of which tells me there’s some reason to think that PPP is oversampling Republican voters. But I wouldn’t bet money on it. If Dems won’t avoid a very, very bad day on January 19th, they need to really get in gear on this race.

Jacobson reported from Brown’s campaign office, and it certainly does seem that Brown has momentum and excitement on his side. I was in the car earlier listening to a re-run of a radio show, probably from Friday. (I’m not sure what show it was because there was a guest host.) A caller from Massachusetts said that in the past, many republican voters never bothered to vote in Senate races. They figured “Why bother? Ted Kennedy and John Kerry own those seats.” Today things are different. People see an opportunity to make a difference with their votes and they aren’t about to let that opportunity slip away.

At this point, it looks like anything is possible and Brown has a real shot at winning this thing.

Via memeorandum