VIDEO: Volunteer Standing in the Snow for Republican Scott Brown

posted at 1:00 pm on January 19, 2010 by The Other McCain
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FITCHBURG, Mass. — Christian Ollenburger, 33, was standing in front of St. Bernard’s Catholic School, the Ward 6 polling place:

Chrisian Ollenburger in the snow on Harvard Street in Fitchburg. There were zero supporters of Martha Coakley waving signs on the street.

St. Bernard’s is the Ward 6 voting place.

News for breakfast at a diner on Fifth Street in Fitchburg. The front-page story from the Fitchburg Sentinel and Enterprise makes an important point:

A series of final polls released yesterday as voters prepared to head to the ballot box confirmed that the race to succeed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy in the U.S. Senate was up for grabs.
The results ranged from one poll conducted by the American Research Group showing Brown ahead by 7 points, to a poll done by Research 2000 for the liberal-leaning blog Daily Kos that showed the race deadlocked at 48 percent.
The extent to which unenrolled voters show up to vote today will likely decide the outcome. Independents make up 51 percent of the electorate, and most expects agree that predicting the outcome is difficult given the unprecedented nature of this special midwinter statewide election.

There has never been a statewide special election in the Commonwealth. There are no down-ticket races, nor any “coattails” from up-ticket. This makes it very difficult to get a model of the actual turnout in this election, and therefore polls are an unreliable indicator.

However, what we’ve seen on the ground, in terms of the vastly greater energy and enthusiam for Brown, points toward a sizeable victory for the Republican. Lifelong Fitchburg resident Da Tech Guy has a prediction:

I still have a bit of that pre-2004 Red Sox Fatalism that all Massachusetts residents born before 1985 have, it drove my early skepticism, but the data is the data and from what I’ve seen I there can only be one conclusion:
I say Scott Brown is going to win this race and I don’t think it is going to be close.

Will have more updates at The Other McCain tonight.

– Robert Stacy McCain

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