Harvard's Experts Favor O'Brien

As the Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign moves into its final hours, Harvard experts say the race between Democrat Shannon P. O’Brien and Republican W. Mitt Romney is still too close to call, though many believe O’Brien will eke out a victory.

Daniel R. Glickman, a former Democratic representative from Kansas and director of the Institute of Politics (IOP), says the race is in a statistical “dead heat.” A poll released last Monday by the IOP and New England Cable News showed O’Brien ahead 41 to 39 percent—well within the poll’s 4.9 percent margin of error. A Boston Herald poll released yesterday had the Democrat leading by a single percentage point.

But Glickman says the smart money is on O’Brien, if only because candidates from the party not in the White House tend to do better in off-year elections.

Mickey Edwards, a former Republican representative from Oklahoma and a lecturer in legislative politics at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), says he also likes O’Brien’s chances.

“The Democrats are usually more organized because they have organized labor behind them,” Edwards says. “If she can remain in a tight race where it is practically a draw, maybe she can get her people to polls and that can do it for her.”

But Romney is not out of the running by any measure.

Edwards contends that O’Brien hurt herself in the campaign’s final debate last Tuesday and says that could give Romney a last-second boost.

Assistant Professor of Government Barry C. Burden says O’Brien has not acted like the favorite in the campaign’s final days.

“O’Brien is usually in the lead and she’s acting like she’s behind and nipping at [Romney’s] heels like a dog,” Burden says. “[Romney’s] acting like a frontrunner. It seems like those are the wrong roles for them to play if you look at the polls.”

Burden says O’Brien’s perceived lack of confidence will work to Romney’s advantage but thinks she will probably still win.

Many observers point to the gender gap in polling indicating that O’Brien—who seeks to become the state’s first elected female governor—has opened up a substantial lead among women voters.

Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology Theda Skocpol ’75 says she believes gender will play “the biggest role in this election.”

But Edwards argues that while O’Brien holds a big lead among women voters, Romney is well ahead among young males.

“So it depends who shows up,” he says.

Burden says that since the gender gap works both ways, the outcome depends on which candidate can “pull across people from the other sex.”

“My guess is [O’Brien] can do a little better job in attracting men than [Romney] can with women, partly because of the union vote,” he says.

Glickman, a former agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration, notes that the most recent IOP poll actually did not find an overwhelming gender gap in the race.

O’Brien picking up the Massachusetts governorship would be good news for a national Democratic Party that expects to make big gains in statehouses tomorrow and hope to take back the majority of the nation’s governorships.

Democrats are less optimistic about their chances to take back the House of Representatives and are holding their breath to see if they can maintain their one-vote margin in the Senate.

“It’s an extremely close election, and the power of Congress is at stake like never before because the margins are so close in the House and Senate,” Glickman says. “We haven’t seen anything this close in both houses in 50 years.”

Edwards predicts that the Republicans will gain a few seats on their lead in the House, but the Democrats will hold on to the Senate.

Burden says he thinks there are too many uncontested Republican seats in the House for Democrats to have a chance to retake that chamber.

He argues that the main significance of tomorrow’s national election is just that they set up the 2004 contests and cautions against giving too much weight to the results.

“If [Bush] is fortunate enough to have a Republican Senate, he will be better off for 2004,” he says. “If he has a Democratic Senate, he has someone to blame if things go wrong.”