Elizabeth Warren takes narrow lead in Massachusetts Senate polls

NEW YORK -- She’s been accused of dressing like a schoolmarm, wagging her finger too often and misstating her Native American roots. But for the first time in a long time, Elizabeth Warren seems to be winning over voters in her race against incumbent Scott Brown for a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts.

Warren overtook Brown for the first time in this race in a poll from Suffolk University/7NEWS released late Monday. She leads 48% to 44%, within the poll’s margin of error. In February, Brown was up by nine points in the same poll, and by one point in May.

It’s a lead that could be bolstered – or shattered – by the first televised debate between the two, which occurs Thursday night.

Two factors may be helping Warren pull ahead: her prominent role at the Democratic National Convention, where she spoke on the same night as Bill Clinton, and a new series of ads that feature supporters, rather than Warren herself.

“On the heels of the convention, she’s shored up her support among the core bases of the Democratic Party,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. “She’s even whittling away a little bit of independents.”

The Suffolk poll is one of three post-convention polls to show Warren’s support trending up. A Western New England University poll conducted Sept. 6-13 showed likely voters preferring Warren to Brown 50% to 44%. That poll had a margin of error of 4.6%. A poll of registered voters in February by the same group showed Brown up by eight points, though he lost that lead by May.

A separate poll by Public Policy Polling shows Warren now leading Brown 48-46 after trailing him 49-44.

“The Massachusetts Senate race remains a toss-up,” said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling, which leans Democratic. That poll has a margin of error of 3.3%. “But the momentum is clearly on Elizabeth Warren’s side now.”

Warren has had her share of problems on the campaign trail. In June, she was accused of misstating her Native American roots in order to advance her academic career. And analysts say she often seems more like a professor than a politician, and that she has problems connecting to the real people that her ads say she fights for.

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“She always seems annoyed, impatient that people don’t know how right she is. She’s got to stop the finger wagging; it adds to her strict schoolmarm appearance and bossy manner,” wrote Dan Payne, a Democratic political analyst, in a column for a Boston radio station. “Soften the hair; the Page Boy haircut makes her seem joylessly practical.”

Her ads were problematic too – analysts said they were preachy, just like the candidate. Many featured Warren talking directly to the camera, trying to tell her story, but with long close-ups of her face. The Boston Globe reported last week that national strategists were urging the campaign to shake up the candidate’s advertising strategy.

The next day, a new ad appeared on YouTube: Fighter, featuring Art Ramalho, who owns the West End Gym in Lowell, where famous boxer Micky Ward trained.

“Elizabeth Warren is a real fighter,” Ramalho says, with a thick Boston accent, as he trains boxers in his gym. “I don’t know about Scott Brown, he’s been siding with the big money guys.”

Warren appears only at the ad in the end, when she’s pictured with Ramalho at his gym.

Still, Warren’s lead is slippery. Scott Brown runs better when he’s behind in polls, Paleologos said, as he was for most of his race for the special election in 2010 for the Senate. And any warm glow from the convention could disappear as the race continues into the fall.

“Eventually, as do most of these races in Massachusetts, it all comes down to independents,” he said.

About 52% of voters in Massachusetts are independents, and are not enrolled with a political party. Although Warren has support of 89% of Democrats, according to the Western New England Polling Institute poll, she needs to get many more independents to be assured of victory. That means her performance at the debates will have to be strong. And she definitely shouldn’t wag any fingers.

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There’s one more factor too: no woman has ever been elected to U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, a contrast with other left-leaning states such as New York, which elected Hillary Rodham Clinton, and California, which is represented in the Senate by two women.

The state has never elected a female governor either – the only woman to hold the top executive position in the state, Jane Swift, became governor after Paul Cellucci left to become ambassador to Canada. Swift did not run for reelection when her term ended.

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alana.semuels@latimes.com

Twitter: @AlanaSemuels