Elizabeth Warren and Charlie Baker appear to be in good standing with Massachusetts voters as they head toward re-election battles next year.

A new WBUR poll (topline, crosstabs) finds 55 percent of registered voters in the state view Warren, one of the state's two Democratic U.S. senators, favorably.

In the last WBUR poll, conducted in January, 51 percent of registered voters viewed Warren favorably. That survey also found that only 44 percent of voters thought Warren deserved re-election, while 46 percent thought it was time to "give someone else a chance."

The latest poll did not ask whether Warren deserves re-election, but instead surveyed head-to-head matchups with current and potential Republican challengers. It finds that Warren's opponents have little name recognition and poll far behind the incumbent senator more than a year before the election.

Warren is unpopular in one part of the state: southeastern Massachusetts. Forty-nine percent of registered voters there have an unfavorable view of her, while only 36 percent view her favorably.

"The economic boom that we see in metro Boston has not reached New Bedford and Fall River," says Jeff Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. "It's a whiter area, less diverse area, and it's a less educated area, so all of [these] things work against Sen. Warren."

The poll also finds Gov. Charlie Baker is still more popular among Massachusetts voters than Warren: 64 percent of registered voters say they have a favorable view of the Republican governor.

"Charlie Baker is very popular," says MassINC pollster Steve Koczela, who conducted the survey for WBUR. "Throughout most of his term, he's been either one of the most popular or the most popular governor in America."

Baker is even popular among Democrats: 57 percent of registered Democratic voters maintain a favorable view of him.

"The thing we're looking for, though, is whether that popularity translates into votes," Koczela says. "In recent history, it hasn't always. So Scott Brown, for instance, was very popular going into his own re-election effort. He was facing, at the outset of the campaign, some Democrats that didn't have much name recognition, and he ended up facing Elizabeth Warren."

Warren ended up defeating Brown in the 2012 Senate race.