Around New England

More Massachusetts Voters Want John Kerry To Run For President Than Elizabeth Warren, Poll Finds

September 20, 2018

Some 58 percent of Massachusetts voters say they don’t want U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2020, according to a new Suffolk University poll.

Only 32 percent thought Warren should run — as opposed to 33 percent who said John Kerry should run. (The difference is within the poll’s margin of error.)

“This was a shocking finding to me, given that Democrats like her so much, and she has been making moves to run for president. I would have expected her to be leading this list of potential Massachusetts presidential candidates,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which conducted the poll, according to The Boston Globe, which sponsored the poll.

Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick drew more support for a presidential bid he has reportedly been mulling:  38 percent of Massachusetts voters said they want him to run. Only 30 percent said they want U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III (D-Brookline) to run, and only 17 percent said they want U.S. Representative Seth Moulton (D-Salem) to run.

In each of the five cases, significantly more Massachusetts said they don’t want the candidate to run for president than said they do want the candidate to run for president.

While Warren topped the list of don’t-run voters at 58 percent, Kerry was a close second, at 55 percent. The others were all at similar numbers:  48.6 percent for Kennedy, 48.2 percent for Moulton, 47.8 percent for Patrick.

The same poll found Warren leading Republican challenger Geoff Diehl in the November 2018 race in Massachusetts for U.S. Senate, 54-24, with independent Shiva Ayyadurai drawing 6 percent.