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Update: An earlier version of this post spelled Justin Shalls name wrong.

Four years ago, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) was the favorite in a January special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D). She lost to a state senator named Scott Brown (R), the first siren that alerted Democrats nationally to an angry midterm electorate that year.

Now Coakley is running for governor, and Bay State Democrats are getting a sickening sensation of deja vu: Three reputable polling firms show Coakley statistically tied with businessman Charlie Baker (R) with less than four weeks to go before Election Day.

National party strategists on both sides started the year focusing on governors races in just a handful of mega-states: Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. Now theyre dealing with a much larger electoral map, as voter unrest puts an unexpected number of gubernatorial contests in play and leaves Democrats on defense in states they ordinarily win.

Thats especially true in the Northeast, with Republican candidates performing surprisingly well in states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and Connecticut.

Voters are fed up with politicians at every level, say polls, whether in Congress or at the state house. This years midterm elections are likely to turn on voter anger directed at incumbents. In races without actual incumbents seeking re-election, political analysts say, voters can register dissatisfaction by casting ballots against the party they perceive to be in charge, even in states with overwhelming advantages for one party: no Republican has won an electoral vote from any of those four states since George H.W. Bush won Maryland and Connecticut in 1988.

In a state like Massachusetts, that works against Democrats. Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is retiring after two terms with healthy approval ratings, but voters take a dim view of the Democratic-dominated state legislature. Republicans have had success in recent gubernatorial elections Patrick broke a 16-year streak of Republican control of the governors mansion when they are able to portray Democratic candidates as products of Beacon Hill.

People in this state, which is dominated by the Democratic Party, will look at the Republican candidate as a balance to the Democratic legislature, said Maurice Cunningham, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

A Suffolk University poll conducted for the Boston Herald showed 51 percent of voters see Coakley as a Beacon Hill insider, while just 24 percent said she would be a reformer. Forty-six percent of those surveyed told Boston Globe pollsters in August that they preferred the governor and the legislative majority hail from different parties. Every one of the eight public polls released in the last two weeks has showed Coakley and Baker in a statistical tie.

In neighboring Connecticut, voters have the opportunity to weigh in with their views of Gov. Dannel Malloys (D) first term and they dont like what they see. Just 41 percent of voters and 36 percent of independents have a favorable view of Malloy, who stumbled over tax rebates he promised but failed to deliver, while 51 percent have an unfavorable opinion. Malloy is tied with former U.S. Ambassador Tom Foley (R) at 43 percent apiece, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, with an independent candidate taking 9 percent, in a state President Obama won with 58 percent of the vote.

Original post:
GovBeat: Amid voter anger, Democrats struggle to lock down Northeast governorships