What Goes Around

Punditry

A pundit comes from the Hindu word for a virtuoso or expert, as a on the sitar or other instrument.  The honorific is added after the name: so, Flynn pandit. 

As of now, the polls are still open on the MA Senate special election.  I will predict Brown over Coakley by 53-47.  This is estimated by averaging the past ten polls from ten different organizations over the past couple of days; so let's see how that goes. Since the polls obviously include undecideds, I took the 50-44 average and normalized it to a sum of 100%. 

Still unanswered is where the uncounted ballot boxes will be suddenly found so that the recount will show Coakley the winner. 

The amusing thing is that the usual routine for a Senate vacancy is that the governor appoints a replacement who serves out the unexpired term.  This was the MA law until the possibility loomed that a Republican governor might choose a replacement for John Kerry if he won the presidential election.  Then a new law was passed calling for a special election.  It may be unique in the nation, but under the Constitution, the state legislature has the authority to regulate elections within the state.  (Not the state supreme court; an electoral matter is not a judicial matter.)  When Kennedy died, a movement was made to rescind the special election law and go back to the older law, since the Commonwealth now had a safely Democratic governor.  However, this was too raw even for the usual suspects and smacked of change-the-rules-so-we-win, so they gritted their teeth and went for the special election.  There is now a chance that they may come to regret that.

We live in interesting times.

For the record, the past ten polls were:

1/18/10	Politico - Insider Advantage	Coakley 43 - Brown 52
1/18/10	ARG	Coakley 45 - Brown 52
1/18/10	PJM	Coakley 42 - Brown 52
1/18/10	Daily KOS	Coakley 48 - Brown 48
1/17/10	InsideMedford-MRG	Coakley 41 - Brown 51
1/17/10	PPP	Coakley 46 - Brown 51
1/16/10	ARG	Coakley 45 - Brown 48
1/15/10	PJM/CrossTarget	Coakley 39 - Brown 54
1/14/10	Suffolk University	Coakley 46 - Brown 50
1/14/10	R2000	Coakley 49 - Brown 41