An Outside Group’s Poll Shows John Connolly Ahead

Democrats For Education Reform (DFER), which is supporting John Connolly in Boston’s mayoral race, is sending an email to its members today informing them that their own polling shows Connolly leading Marty Walsh.

It reads in part:

DFER uses two of Obama’s polling firms, Benenson Strategy Group and Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, and the latter… has been tracking the Boston mayoral race for us the past three weeks. We don’t know the eventual margin, but we have more data than any single public poll. That data tells a story that sounds familiar: political endorsements helped Marty Walsh narrowed the gap in early October, and he surged in the weeks when the only TV ads were run by his outside groups.

In the aggregate, polls show what the DFER field team sees on the ground every day: this race is very close, and (as our tracking poll below shows) the electorate has been relatively stable for three weeks.

I have been given a look at the full topline results of that Anzalone Liszt Grove Research polling. It shows Connolly leading Walsh 43 percent to 36 percent from October 24-29 (likely voters, including leaners); after leading 41 percent to 36 percent from October 20-24, and 40 percent to 36 percent from October 14-17.

Those date groupings could have been a little manipulated to create more of a smooth line of results, I suppose, but you get the general impression.

It’s also notable to me that the undecideds remain quite high in this poll, at 21 percent.

The DFER email also introduces the group’s new TV ad, which you should be seeing a lot of soon. Here’s your first look: