What? Charlie Baker, the embodiment of establishment Republicanism, is more popular among Boston voters than firebrand populist Elizabeth Warren?

That’s what it looks like at first blush in a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll released earlier this week. But a deeper dive into the numbers with the poll’s director shows the survey is less alarming for Warren and her fellow Democrats.

The survey, taken last week to test the mayor’s race, shows the GOP governor holding a 59 percent favorable rating, while 19 percent have an unfavorable view of Baker in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Those are unusually strong numbers for a Republican political figure in a city that crushes GOP candidates — including Baker in two state elections.

Warren has barely the same level of popularity — nearly 57 percent in the poll — a low rating in a city that gives huge margins to Democratic candidates. Close to 28 percent of respondents viewed Warren unfavorably — 9 points more than Baker.

And when asked which of eight national political figures were their least favorite, 75 of the 500 respondents chose her, while only 4 chose Senator Bernie Sanders. She ran second to Donald Trump, whom 291 respondents picked as their least favorite pol.

So what is happening?

David Paleologos, Suffolk’s director of the Political Research Center, says the polling sample — which screened for likely voters in the Nov. 7 municipal election — does not reflect who will vote in the 2018 election, when Warren will be on the ballot.

“What we are seeing in a municipal election like this is a turnout that is more elderly and less minority and less young people,’’ he said. “So absolutely, Baker would do better.’’

Indeed, 33 percent of respondents in the poll said they were retired.

But there was a glimpse of good news for Warren and Democrats among the dominantly elderly/white voting sample. When asked who was their favorite of eight political names, she ran away with it, getting 152 respondents to choose her.

That’s important because Boston is critical to Democrats’ ability to overcome the Republican surges in GOP strongholds around the state. Democrats must run up the margin in the metro area to win statewide.

For example, Baker got some 31 percent of the Boston vote in 2014 — and that played a role in keeping the margin of his Democratic rival, Martha Coakley, down in an election that he won by a whisker. In 2010, when he lost to Governor Deval Patrick by 6 percent, Baker got only 23 percent of the Boston vote, thanks to in part to then-mayor Thomas M. Menino and his political machine.

The Suffolk/Boston Globe survey was conducted Oct. 19 to 21 and had a margin of error of plus/minus 4.4 percent.

Frank Phillips

Candidate’s logo gets state’s shape wrong

As soon as Maura Sullivan’s name was floated as a congressional candidate in New Hampshire, she was called a carpetbagger, having just moved to the state months earlier.

So it didn’t help when she launched her campaign Monday with a logo that badly distorted the shape of New Hampshire, lopping off a chunk of the state near Keene.

With social media in an uproar, the mistake was quickly fixed. In an interview Tuesday, Sullivan refused to explain what happened.

Sullivan, a Democrat, is one of a handful of candidates who jumped into the Granite State’s First Congressional District race after Representative Carol Shea-Porter announced in early October that she would not seek reelection.

Despite having no previous connection to New Hampshire, Sullivan, 38, and her fiance moved to the state in June. With a resume that includes a tour in Iraq as a Marine, a Harvard Business School degree, and two separate posts in the Obama administration, she was encouraged to run by the same organization that persuaded Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton to do so.

“Portsmouth is my home,’’ Sullivan said in the interview. “I didn’t plan to run for Congress three weeks ago, but sometimes in life you have a chance to stand up and I am standing up.’’

New Hampshire has something of a recent history with outsiders moving to the state to run for office. In 2014, former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown became a New Hampshire resident to run (unsuccessfully) for the Senate. That same year, the Republican nominee for governor had to formally petition a state commission to prove he met the residency requirement. Add to that the fact that a Democrat challenged Shea-Porter for this seat in 2014, just months after he moved from New York City.

It’s worth noting that all of those candidates lost.

James Pindell

Candidate claims Walsh’s support — 2 languages

It’s the type of campaign flier that can get lost in translation.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh maintains he won’t endorse anyone in any City Council race, though a flyer being distributed by District 1 candidate Stephen Passacantilli’s team seems to make that suggestion, even if it’s in a different language.

The flier — printed in multiple languages including Mandarin and Spanish — shows a beaming Passacantilli rubbing shoulders with Walsh, with a headline that roughly translates to “I’m with Stephen’’ or “I support Stephen.’’

Walsh had previously vowed to stay out of the race: both Lydia Edwards and Passacantilli worked for him, in the Office of Housing Stability and in the Office of Economic Development, respectively (both are on leave).

Walsh told reporters earlier this week, though, that he approved of Passacantilli’s flier. He noted that he met Passacantilli 15 years ago, and that Passacantilli quit his job four years ago to work for his campaign. “I’m forever grateful for it,’’ he said. But he stopped of saying he formally endorsed him.

Edwards is “great candidate and I wish them both luck,’’ the mayor said. “I don’t know if I’m going to get involved in that race . . . I think that’s a good race out there, there are a lot of good issues being spoken about.’’

The mayor pointed out that a similar flier that lists policy issues that “Marty Walsh & Lydia Edwards Support’’ was sent out without his approval. The flier was produced and distributed by a third party organization, not the Edwards team.

Passacantilli, who ran ahead of Edwards in a three-way preliminary election — the two Democrats will compete in the Nov. 7 general election — said in a statement: “My relationship with the mayor goes back 15 years and is rooted in his help during my recovery. I’m grateful for his support then and now.’’

Edwards, who picked up the endorsement of Charlestown community organizer Jack Kelly in the battle for votes in that key neighborhood, said she had no comment on Passacantilli’s flier, that she is focused on her own campaign.

“My campaign is focused on voters, on door-to-door, on making sure our message of being an independent voice gets out there,’’ she said.

Milton Valencia

The return of Bill Weld in 2020? ‘Who knows?’

Former governor Bill Weld, who ran last year as the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee, will address an international libertarian organization next week during a speech in New York, a sort of political re-emergence after Weld has spent much of the past year focusing on his business portfolio.

Might the famously peripatetic former chief executive again try his hand at electioneering, perhaps at the top of the Libertarian ticket, as many party activists wished he had last year?

“The most I’ve said is I’m still a ­Libertarian, and as the years roll by I’ll probably want to be involved in the discussion leading up to 2020, and supportive of the Libertarian Party ­efforts there,’’ Weld said this week ­during a phone interview, offering a sort of non-answer answer.

Pressed, Weld laughed, saying, “Who knows? I have no visibility on what’s going to happen in the next three years.’’

Weld acknowledged that some had hoped he and Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, had swapped spots on the ticket, but chalked it up to a geographical divide.

“People in the East wanted me at the top of the ticket, and people in the West said, ‘Gary, who’s this plant you’ve got?’’’ Weld said.

His Nov. 4 speech to the Students for Liberty conference at New York University is billed as a discussion on how to move past the country’s “hyperpartisanship’’ and as Weld’s first speech “since the election’’ last year.

Jim O’Sullivan