I remain wary about the chances of Republican Scott Brown in the special Senate election in Massachusetts, but a person working with Brown’s campaign passes along this bit:

First, thank-you for covering this race as the lack of national attention on this race at this time in the Senate is genuinely vexing to many of Brown’s supporters.
Secondly, at the ground level we have seen an incredibly unique phenomenon occurring here. Without the benefit of polls, I would say Brown is causing quite a groundswell of support from Republicans, unenrolleds and even Democrats. Now when registered Democrats are expressing an interest to volunteer, we know something is up.
In the end, it might be the lack of national attention that helps us towards victory here. For Coakley’s supporters don’t even believe a race is occurring. And the fiscal conservatives of Massachusetts are by far, hands down the most motivated group in our state during this special election.

Meanwhile RedMassGroup notes that Brown raised more than $600,000 in December. Coakley will still have the financial advantage, but that seems like a healthy sum for a challenger in a special election. Over at RealClearPolitics, Sean Trende does a bit of back-of-the-envelope math and concludes:

In any event, if we take a 38 percent Democrat, 19 percent Republican, 42 percent Independent electorate and have Coakley win 90 percent of the Democrats, 4 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Independents, we come out with an exceedingly close 51.06 percent-48.9 percent Coakley win. I did not expect that.

A result like that would indeed be an earthquake; a Brown win, obviously, would be 10.0 on the political Richter scale.

Having said that, there are times where I feel like I’ve been swayed by anecdotal evidence before . . .