| There's a great discussion going on in the comments on my previous post on Minnesota's underperforming trend with respect to Democratic wins around the country. I don't claim to have all the answers, and some people are bringing up valid points that should be examined in considerable depth once the results of the legally required recount in the Senate race are known.
All that being said, the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza brought up another data point for us to consider as we perform that study... In Minnesota, Obama took 1,573,288 votes, compared with 1,211,335 for comedian Al Franken -- a drop-off of more than 360,000 from the presidential to the Senate race.
That under-vote is especially significant considering that Franken trails Sen. Norm Coleman (R) by 221 votes, according to the Associated Press, and the race is almost certainly headed to a statewide manual recount that could last into next month. There seems to be a vague correlation between the drop-off between Obama and Franken and Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley's vote total -- but it's not exact. Barkley got around 411,000 votes, so while a large percentage of Barkley's votes may have been no-votes or Franken votes in a two-way race, there are probably other factors besides the overly simplistic "the third-party candidate screwed the DFLer again." Barkley definitely drew some support from Coleman-leaning-but-dissatisfied voters, but his support wavered late in the game from a steady peak of around 18 points for much of October to right around the 15 he ended up receiving on Election Day.
One thing that's being lost in all of the brou-ha-ha over the recount is the fact that the polls on this race were generally RIGHT ON THE MONEY -- the final averages showed Franken and Coleman knotted at 40, with Barkley trailing at about 15.5, and about 4 points undecided. Split the undecideds between Franken and Coleman, and you hit the unofficial result right on the head. Pretty impressive, actually.
In any case, make sure you have a peek at Nate Silver's post (linked below) on what the recount is likely to do to the results...at present, it looks like a manual recount has a very good shot of concluding that Franken won this race, albeit by the waifiest of margins. |
