The Gabrieli campaign sent out a blast e-mail to its supporters (I am one) to respond to the Boston Globe’s latest poll numbers — showing a big lead for Deval Patrick — that says that the Globe has a history of being very wrong in its polling in the lead-up to the primary. I have to say that I wonder about the reliability of ANY telephone polling at the moment. How many people realistically answer their home phone for a survey in this era of cell phones, e-mail, sms, and DO NOT CALL? It must be a self-selecting and skewed group in almost any poll. No doubt pollsters are clever and finding ways to correct for this obvious problem, but I don’t put much stock in the polls, by media outlets or internals for campaigns.

Here’s a partial text of the e-mail to supporters:

Memo: Great new Gabrieli poll numbers

A Gabrieli campaign internal poll shows that our campaign is gaining momentum with just days to go before the primary. Our poll indicates that Chris (30%) is within the margin of error — in a statistical tie — with Deval Patrick (34%), while it has become clear that Tom Reilly (15%) is all but eliminated from contention.

As more and more voters make their decisions, they’re responding to Chris’ common-sense commitment to putting results before useless fighting between Democrats and Republicans. The work that we’ve all done together over the past few months is paying off. That’s why Kerry Healey launched negative attacks against Chris last week. She thinks that the only way to beat Chris Gabrieli is to beat him in the Democratic primary.

Unfortunately, today’s Boston Globe poll misses the mark. The Globe poll — which was conducted mostly before Chris’s forceful response to the Healey attack ads — has a history of being off the mark. In 1990, John Silber trailed Lt. Gov. Francis X. Bellotti in a Boston Globe poll by 23 points just five days before the primary. Silber beat Bellotti 54-44.