In the special Senate election in Massachusetts, Representative Edward J. Markey, the Democratic nominee, starts with a strong lead over Gabriel Gomez, the Republican, according to a new poll from Suffolk University.
Taken Saturday through Tuesday, the poll of voters likely to vote in the June 25 special election showed Mr. Markey with 52 percent and Mr. Gomez with 35 percent, with 11 percent undecided. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus four percentage points.
“The numbers are pretty ominous†for Mr. Gomez, said David Paleologos, the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “There aren’t a lot of weak spots for Markey.â€
One of the most positive signs for Mr. Markey is that Massachusetts voters hold an overwhelmingly favorable view of President Obama, both personally and in how he is doing his job. And most voters there believe Mr. Markey will support the president, although he recently opposed a proposal by Mr. Obama that would lower Social Security benefits by changing the formula used to calculate cost-of-living adjustments.
Mr. Markey, who was first elected to Congress in 1976, is better known than Mr.Gomez, a private equity investor and former Navy SEAL who is a newcomer on the political scene. Fully one-third of the voters said they did not know enough about Mr. Gomez to express an opinion about him.
Mr. Paleologos said that Mr. Gomez had yet to win over independents, especially men, who voted for other candidates in last week’s Republican primary. “They probably will come to Gomez eventually, but we’re not picking up an instant warming of those voters to him now,†he said.
And yet, in a state where Scott Brown, a Republican, pulled off an upset victory for the Senate in 2010, no one is counting Mr. Gomez out. From the minute he was declared the winner of the primary, he has cast Mr. Markey as a relic and raised questions about campaign donations Mr. Markey accepted from industry groups that he regulates.
On the question of which candidate is more likely to change the way Congress works, Mr. Gomez beat Mr. Markey in the Suffolk poll by six percentage points. And on the question of which candidate can better help turn around the economy, far and away the most important issue to voters, Mr. Gomez trailed Mr. Markey by only six percentage points.
But it remains to be seen whether Mr. Gomez can attract the kind of financial donations that Mr. Brown received; Mr. Markey is doing his best to try to limit that money by calling on Mr. Gomez to sign a pledge that would penalize a candidate if outside special interests ran television ads on his behalf. So far, Mr. Gomez has refused to sign it.
The special election is to fill the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry, the Democrat who stepped down to become secretary of state. The poll found that the third-party candidate, Richard Hoes, of the Twelve Visions Party, drew one percent of the vote.
