New UMass Amherst/WCVB Poll Finds Markey Challengers Face Uphill Battle in 2026 Senate Race

"Is Moulton getting a jump start in an open battle for the Senate?" Nteta asks. "In the aftermath of his decision to challenge Markey, many were wondering why Moulton would put his political career in jeopardy to face a popular incumbent with a track record of besting his younger counterparts. The answer may be found in our polling, which indicates that Moulton's decision may yield political fruit if, by chance, Markey decided to exit the Senate race. Our results suggests that in an open primary, the contest would become a three-way battle led by Moulton (29%), followed by Pressley (24%) and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (19%), should they choose to enter.

"Across the country, a number of young Democrats are urging long-serving Democratic incumbents to 'pass the torch' to a new generation of leaders," Nteta adds. "In Massachusetts, the Democratic Senate primary is shaping up to be one of the nation's most closely watched races, testing whether Democratic voters are indeed ready, willing and able to move on from a popular incumbent. So far, our polling suggests that Democratic voters continue to support Markey, who leads not only his current challengers, but also emerges as the frontrunner in a hypothetical matchup involving Rep. Pressley. For now, Markey remains a formidable opponent whose track record suggests that he will not go quietly into the night."

Voters' Views on Changes to Elections

The latest UMass Amherst/WCVB Poll also asked respondents' views on a slate of possible changes to how elections are managed in the Bay State.

"Sizeable majorities of Bay State residents favor making Election Day a holiday, allowing same-day voter registration, and requiring all voters to show government issued photo ID to vote," Theodoridis says. "The state is more divided on whether those currently serving a prison sentence should be allowed to vote and whether voting should be compulsory for all eligible citizens. For a plurality of Massachusetts residents, the jury is still out on whether an independent commission should redraw state legislative and congressional districts."

"As with previous polls, we find that a huge majority of Massachusetts residents supports measures that make voting more convenient," Rhodes adds. "In particular, 65% support allowing people to register on Election Day and 71% favor allowing people to register and cast their ballot during the early voting period. Given longstanding supermajority support for these measures, it will be interesting to see if the Democrat-controlled state legislature will institute these popular reforms."

Methodology

For this University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB Poll, YouGov interviewed 800 adults from Massachusetts, 416 of which were likely Democratic primary voters, providing two samples of interest. These respondents were sampled based upon a sampling frame on gender, age, race and education. The sampling frame is a politically representative "modeled frame" of Massachusetts adults, based upon the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and 2020 presidential vote.

For the main sample, the cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The cases and the frame were combined and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles. The weights were then post-stratified on 2024 presidential vote choice as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories) and education (4-categories), to produce the final weight for the main sample.

For the 416 Massachusetts likely Democratic primary voters, a sampling frame of 2022 Vote Smart Massachusetts Democratic primary voters was employed. The cases were post-stratified on a three-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories) and race (2-categories) to produce the final weight for this sample of Democratic primary voters.

The margin of error of this poll is 4.1% among all respondents and 6.1% among Democratic likely voters.

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll