That strikes me as the most interesting (tentative) number coming out of the Brown/Coakley race — Massachusetts went 62%-36% for Obama in 2008, and now, “With more than three-quarters of results counted, [Republican Scott] Brown had 52 percent of the vote to 47 percent for Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.” That’s a 16% gain for Republicans, and a 15% loss for Democrats; let’s call it 15%.
Naturally, Obama wasn’t just a Democrat, and Brown isn’t just a Republican. Still, the 15% seems to be something of a measure of the falloff in the Democrats’ support from November 2008 to now, at least in otherwise deep blue Massachusetts.