By Krista Gesaman
Initially, news organizations were so certain that Democrat Martha Coakley would defeat Republican Scott Brown in the Jan. 19 special election for the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat that they did not even commission exit polls. Early polls showed Coakley far ahead, and Massachusetts leans heavily Democratic, having gone for Barack Obama by 26 points just 14 months earlier. But a series of campaign blunders and a sour national mood undid Coakley, and she was overtaken by Brown, a charismatic state senator, in the final days of the campaign, reminding us that politics is always unpredictable. What follows are the 10 most memorable political upsets in recent American political history.
