Scott Brown Leading in Massachusetts

Republican (and sometimes RINO) Scott Brown, who famously won Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat, is leading against the Democrat most likely to face him in November:

Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., leads Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren by nine points, riding a dominant advantage among independent voters, according to a Suffolk University/WHDH-TV poll released Thursday night.

Brown carries 49 percent to Warren's 40 percent of the overall vote, and laps her among the independent voters who comprise a majority of the Massachusetts electorate, 60 percent to 28 percent.

The poll, taken as Brown has been shelled by Democrats for co-sponsoring legislation permitting employers to restrict access to contraception coverage on religious grounds, is a departure from other recent surveys that have shown Warren with a small lead.

Warren, the consumer advocate President Obama passed over to helm the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she helped design, has quickly consolidated support among Massachusetts Democrats, overcoming concerns that voters and the state's political establishment would resist a candidate born in Oklahoma and encouraged to run by Senate Democrats in Washington.

Brown is a favorite of independents because he's more likely to govern right down the middle than to the right where conservatives hoped he'd be. Warren, on the other hand, is a lefty ideologue and as more people come to know how far left she is, the less support she'll have among independents.  If you're looking to elect a moderate voice, she's definitely not it.