For First Time Since 2020, New UMass Amherst/WCVB Poll Finds Plurality of Residents Say Massachusetts is on the ‘Wrong Track’

"Bay Staters certainly sense that fear and loathing have come to dominate American politics, as 9-in-10 think the nation is politically divided and are concerned about political violence in the United States," says Alexander Theodoridis, associate professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll. "But there is also concern about political divisions and the potential for political violence here in the commonwealth. While most respondents are not concerned about political violence in their local communities, 60% worry that it could strike Massachusetts, and a plurality sees both the commonwealth and their local communities as politically divided."

Changing gears, the poll once more asked about an issue that has been gathering support in many communities recently, prohibiting cellphone use in schools.

"In schools across the commonwealth, administrators, teachers, and parents are debating how to deal with the impact of cell phones on student learning and engagement," Nteta says. "More than 30 states have banned or restricted the use of cell phones in public schools, and our poll continues to find widespread support for similar restrictions in Massachusetts, with 75% expressing support for such a ban. These bans are supported across gender, generational, class and racial divides, and even elicit majoritarian support among Democrats, independents and Republicans. Given the bipartisan popularity of this ban, it is likely that the state legislature and Gov. Healey may soon make Massachusetts the next state to ban the use of cell phones in K-12 public schools."

Finally, the poll asked about the possibility of changing the Massachusetts state flag.

"For some time, there has been political controversy over the Massachusetts state flag, which some view as discriminatory toward Native Americans," Rhodes explains. "Last year, the state legislature established a commission to make recommendations on the redesign of the flag, which recently proposed three alternatives for further deliberation. Our survey shows that, in a head-to-head test between the current flag and these alternatives, Massachusetts residents overwhelmingly prefer the current flag, with 64% choosing it.

"Longstanding symbols are hard to change," Rhodes concludes, "and our findings suggest that critics of the current flag have not yet shifted majority opinion in the commonwealth away from it."

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