Folks interested in policy/financial regulation should be interested in the possible Senate race between Massachusetts incumbent Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, who has decided to run for the Democratic nomination (in 2012) after being thwarted in her desire to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

A new poll from PPP finds that she's leading Scott Brown:

Elizabeth Warren has had an incredibly successful launch to her Senate campaign and actually leads Scott Brown now by a 46-44 margin, erasing what was a 15 point deficit the last time we polled the state in early June.

Warren's gone from 38% name recognition to 62% over the last three months and she's made a good first impression on pretty much everyone who's developed an opinion about her during that period of time. What was a 21/17 favorability rating in June is now 40/22- in other words she's increased the voters with a positive opinion of her by 19% while her negatives have risen only 5%.

The surprising movement toward Warren has a lot to do with her but it also has a lot to do with Scott Brown. We now find a slight plurality of voters in the state disapproving of him- 45%, compared to only 44% approving. We have seen a steady decline in Brown's numbers over the last 9 months. In early December his approval was a +24 spread at 53/29. By June it had declined to a +12 spread at a 48/36. And now it's continued that fall to its current place.

That's a slim margin, but again, for a non-incumbent liberal it's pretty remarkable.

And though Warren would be just one Senator we actually could see her working with tea party types in opposing bailouts, and other areas kneecapping the strength of big banks, even if ostensibly they were opposed on regulatory issues like Dodd-Frank.