Poor Tim Pawlenty. The DFLers won't cut him any slack and, apparently, neither will Minnesotans. A recent SurveyUSA poll shows that a majority of Minnesotans don't like the job he's doing. These are his worst numbers as Governor.
Not great news if you're running for president: A new SurveyUSA poll finds that 52% of Minnesotans disapprove of the job Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) is doing and only 42% approve, "giving him some of the lowest marks he's gotten in his seven plus years at the state's helm."
(Political Wire)
It's going to be fun as his 2012 presidential campaign "ramps up" and we Minnesotans get to tell the nation what a rotten Governor he's been. I'm trying to think of slogans for his 2012 campaign.
Whoops! Looks like I may have blown a prediction. After looking at Bachmann numbers from earlier this year, I went out on a limb and predicted that Bachmann would try to get into the race for Minnesota governor or senator. Her numbers in Minnesota polling and her district had been surprisingly strong, given the fact that she's a nut, liar and bigot.
But tonight the Minnesota Independent reports that a new poll shows that Minnesotans view Bachmann unfavorably. Excerpt:
Poll: Majority of Minnesotans 'embarrassed' by Bachmann
By Paul Schmelzer 2/11/10 6:00 AM
A new survey of Minnesotans shows that a majority of residents - 56 percent - are embarrassed by Rep. Michele Bachmann. The release of the survey, commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and Credo Action, follows recent high-profile statements by Bachmann that she believes President Barack Obama wants to "annihilate" conservatives, that the U.S. faces a "curse" - and extinction - if it fails to support Israel, and that government must "wean" Americans off of social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.
...Predictably, 87 percent of Democrats polled said they were embarrassed, while only 12 percent of Republicans agreed (58 pecent of Republican respondents said they were proud of Bachmann)...
...The survey of 600 Minnesotans gauged feedback based on gender (by four percentage points, more women favored Bachmann than men), race (55 percent of whites are embarrassed by the congresswoman, while 80 percent of people of other races held that sentiment) and congressional district.
Good news for those of us who want to see Michele Bachmann's political career go no higher than the Sixth District level. I'd feel better if it had been a conservative polling outfit that had come to these conclusions, but conservatives are unlikely to disclose findings like that.
I'm not withdrawing my prediction--yet. But this is good news for Bachmann opponents everywhere. If Bachmann is as unpopular in Minnesota as this poll indicates (it's a reversal of a trend found in a poll conducted earlier this year) it's going to be that much harder for her to convince the MN GOP that's she's the go-to candidate for higher office in the state.
And conventional political wisdom holds that a politician has to hold a serious leadership position--state governor, senator or military leader--to get serious consideration for a White House run.
So let's hope that the Progressive Change Campaign Committee/Democracy for America/Credo Action poll findings hold for the foreseeable future.
By the way: since the Minnesota Independent has done the best regular reporting on Bachmann's career in this state, changes in MnIndy are worth noting here.
David Brauer of the MinnPost.com reports that MNIndy editor Paul Schmelzer has been promoted to managing editor of newly renamed parent American Independent News Network (AINN). (Schmelzer, by the way, is the author of this latest Bachmann poll story.)
Schmelzer says that MNIndy will still be his primary duty, and MNIndy still retains Andy Birkey has a reporter. Birkey is perhaps the best regular reporter on the Bachmann story in this state.
Read the MNIndy article on poll results, paying special attention to the findings on the views of independent voters that are mentioned in the fifth paragraph:
http://minnesotaindependent.co...
(Sorry to bump two recent posts down the page for my own stuff, but I want to make sure readers see this one and have a chance to comment. - promoted by Joe Bodell)
In my previous poll of the MPP community on the DFL gubernatorial field, I asked "who are you supporting?"
Here are what I think we can consider "final" results:
* R.T. Rybak - 43 votes (24.57%)
* Matt Entenza - 43 votes (24.57%)
* Paul Thissen - 35 votes (20%)
* John Marty - 15 votes (8.57%)
* Margaret Anderson Kelliher - 10 votes (5.71%)
* Undecided - 9 votes (5.14%)
* Steve Kelley - 8 votes (4.57%)
* Tom Bakk - 7 votes (4%)
* Mark Dayton - 4 votes (2.29%)
* Susan Gaertner - 1 votes (0.57%)
* Tom Rukavina - 0 votes (0%)
I will say that there was a rather large influx of account creations on the day of the poll, but hey -- getting your supporters engaged in the netroots community is not a bad thing.
This time, I'm asking who you think is actually going to win the endorsement at the DFL state convention in April.
So, have at it folks -- and please feel free to discuss the differences between these two questions at length in the comments.
And no, "No endorsement" is not an option, because...well, let's face it, it's not an option.
I just received a call from "Minnesota Research", where the person refused to give any other information other than she was calling from a "calling center", not even the state of the calling center. So after I asked who was paying for the information and a few other questions, she said "Thank you ma-am" and hung up. My gosh, how rude! She wants to ask me questions that my friends don't get the answers to and she does not even give her real name nor where she is calling from.
Today there was a school bus accident where children thankfully did not need to be hospitalized. However both hospitals, HCMC and Regions, are discussing how much to cut back on hospital emergency services from Tim Pawlenty's line item veto this week. So what kind of polls is Tim Pawlenty going to have if a child in a bus accident fails to get immediate emergency treatment?
Well actually the polls are already beginning to stack up against Tim Pawlenty despite the incredibly positive soft spin given to Tim Pawlenty by mainstream media.
Wait, wait, the polls do keep stacking up. An Star Tribune instant poll (not very good, but fun) has 44% support for the DFL position over 39% support for Pawlenty's position. Actually, since the third option supports some revenue raising as Alex points out in the comments, the percentage then exceeds 60%. However a real Star Tribune Poll had:
50% back both cutting the budget and raising revenue, the option that had the highest approval.
67% approved the "Tax the rich" strategy.
And soon Tim Pawlenty has to choose between Minnesota voters and presidential aspirations yet again because ABM poll shows that
59% believe that Norm Coleman should concede to Al Franken.
Wait, wait does Pawlenty even have the option of running for governor again, according to a SurveyUSA poll
57% said Governor Tim Pawlenty should not run for a third term.
A new poll from Grove Insight Research shows that Minnesota voters want Norm Coleman to concede and Gov. Pawlenty to sign the election certificate that will allow Al Franken to be seated -- finally -- in the U.S. Senate.
The poll, commissioned by Alliance for a Better Minnesota, showed that 59% of surveyed voters believe Coleman should concede to Al Franken, while just 34% believe he should keep his legal challenge going. Those numbers fit with the 61% who believe the recount and challenge process has been fair and impartial, against just 24% -- the true dead-end of the conservative rump -- who still question the process.
54% now believe that Franken won in November fair and square, while just 26% believe Coleman actually won. Among the remainder, 14% are unsure of who actually came out ahead and 5% believe the two candidates actually tied.
As for Governor Pawlenty, there are some potential landmines waiting for him should he decide that he, and not the state Supreme Court, is the Decider:
What ought to be of concern to Governor Pawlenty is the fallout should he refuse to sign a certificate of election. A clear majority (58%) believe that failure to certify Franken after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules raises at least "somewhat serious doubts" about Tim Pawlenty. This number grows to 64% when voters are told that the governor is legally required to sign an election certificate. In fact, even four in 10 (40%) self-identified Republicans say they would have "serious doubts" with their Republican Governor should he fail to sign an election certificate after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules.
And of course, there's this:
When given two opposing viewpoints, nearly half the electorate ascribe to the view that Pawlenty's motivations are not based on legitimate concerns about the process, but a desire to play partisan politics and help conservative Republicans in Congress. In fact, Minnesota voters are more likely to see the failure to certify as an emblem of Pawlenty's ambition than they are to believe that he prudently is waiting for the matter to be resolved in the federal courts.
Not that our dear Governor will care, but there it is.
Instead of pundits, I wanted a target group of smart savvy young political volunteers to rate the possible candidates for governor. I found 24 MYDFL volunteers to rate the candidates, at a MYDFL event where the candidates were speaking. Tom Bakk sent in a substitute. Chris Coleman came in for an unscheduled speech, which is why his name is not on the form.
On tonight's 10 o'clock news, KSTP (channel 5) will tell you about a new poll in the Third district congressional race.
What they probably won't tell you are the details that call into question the integrity of the station's entire news-gathering operation.
A SurveyUSA poll done for KSTP will show Republican Erik Paulsen leading by 5 points, with a margin of error of about 5 points. According to sources, the poll does not take any account whatsoever of same-day registrations, which is a big deal -- assuming 2004 turnout models, same-day registrations will account for around 18% of total turnout. Assuming even greater excitement for Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama in the suburbs, that number very well could be higher than 18% -- that is a potentially HUGE error in SurveyUSA's methodology.
However, the issue with KSTP is a little more nefarious -- according to sources, they pre-released the poll results to Paulsen's campaign ahead of time, and not to the campaign of Democratic candidate Ashwin Madia. The Madia campaign had to call the station directly to get the results after finding out that they had already been given to Paulsen. This is a HUGE error in judgment at KSTP, and deserves all the negative attention it should and will receive.
I haven't bought into the theory that since KSTP's owner, Stan Hubbard, donates mainly to Republican candidates, the station is a GOP shill. However, this sequence of events, so close to a huge election, has us wondering about the integrity of their news operation.
Bottom line: Watch for the presidential numbers in this poll. If they feel too close, they probably are, and the entire poll should be treated as crap until KSTP and SurveyUSA explain themselves.
Independence Party candidate David Dillon received the support of 8 percent of respondents, while "undecided" got 9 percent.
Key points:
The survey was conducted September 29 - 30 and has a 4.9 percent margin of error.
In the survey, 82 percent of respondents said that the country is "off on the wrong track" and when asked who would "take us in a new direction," Ashwin Madia led 40 - 16 percent over Paulsen.
The DCCC would not immediately release any of the underlying data, unfortunately. However, a statistically significant lead like this represents great growth for the Madia campaign, and puts Paulsen's immediate shift to all-attack-ads-all-the-gosh-darned-time campaigning in perspective. My suspicion is that the Paulsen campaign's internal numbers reflect this poll's results, and they recognized a couple of weeks ago that going on the attack was their only viable route to victory.
Madia, on the other hand, has remained generally positive on his own account (the D-trip's attack ads against Paulsen and a punch-back response to Paulsen's attack notwithstanding) and is building a winning machine with support from Sen. Russ Feingold this past weekend, U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) tonight and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) tomorrow -- not to mention the many committed volunteers making the whole thing happen on the ground.
Here's 538.com's Nate Silver on the drastically different poll results that appeared this week in the Minnesota Senate race:
There's something else weird going on, too. Look at that table above and add the three numbers together. In the Star-Tribune's poll, they add up to 95 percent, which means that 5 percent of voters are "missing". And in the SurveyUSA poll, they add up to 88 percent, which means that 12 percent of voters are "missing".
Those "missing" voters aren't actually missing, of course; they probably identify themselves as part of some sort of third party, or refused to provide their party ID. There may also be some ambiguities related to Minnesotans identifying themselves as part of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party as opposed to straight Democrats.
So who's right? I'm not sure that I'd trust either of these polls. The Minnesota senate race, most likely, is a toss-up.
Silver's a top-notch statistical maven, so forget the partisan spin, both positive and negative, for the time being, and remember that this race is still a toss-up. If it weren't, Michael Brodkorb wouldn't be overreaching on ridiculous rumors and making himself look foolish in a desperate attempt to shore up the levy against a second Democratic tsunami in a row.
Read the whole post from 538.com here -- it's good stuff, as the entire site is.
It's been a while since I've looked at the polling trends in the U.S. Senate race between Norm Coleman, Al Franken, and now Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley. So, courtesy of Pollster.com, I've backfilled the poll graph to see what's going on:
Despite a tough couple of months in the media earlier this year for Al Franken, this is an extremely tight race. While his numbers have stabilized a bit north of 40%, since mid-June he's managed to pull Norm Coleman's numbers right into that area as well.
The graph also now shows the role Dean Barkley may or may not play. A couple of polls put him around 3%, a couple put him around 14. Despite my colleague Chris Truscott's role working for Barkley, I'm leaning toward predicting an outcome closer to the 3 side. As November 4th approaches, voters are going to be more and more mindful of the stakes in this election, and are not going to as willing torisk throwing a vote away as they may have in the past for Jesse Ventura, Tim Penny, or Peter Hutchinson.
But who knows; I've been wrong before. It's worth noting that while Rasmussen has consistently shown a tight race between Franken and Coleman, SurveyUSA's numbers have tightened considerably as well.
A survey conducted by Democracy Corps and GQR (a Democratic polling firm) shows that Democratic candidates are leading their Republican opponents on important issues in some of the most competitive districts across the country.
This latest Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner survey of the competitive battleground districts reveals an intensely angry electorate, even more sour on Republicans who have not distanced themselves enough from Bush and are now at risk even at the edge of the current map of competitive congressional seats. Democratic candidates are now ahead by 4 points in the 40 most vulnerable Republican seats, even in the bottom tier. A near majority of 48 percent in these Republican seats say they "can't vote to re-elect" their Republican incumbent, while Democrats are ahead in the open seats.
When Democracy Corps last surveyed these Republican-held Congressional seats in July,1 the Republicans had made gains, incumbents had protected themselves and we thought the battleground would contract to fewer seats. We were wrong: the opposite has happened. Increased anger about the country and a sharper focus on the economy has damaged Republican incumbents and put even more Republican seats in jeopardy. Democrats are in a position to take half of these seats or more and clearly the battleground extends beyond these 40 districts.
It's an aggregate poll, so it doesn't tell us a whole lot about what's going on here in Minnesota, but one should look at this poll and see whether it reflects real-world sentiments in districts like Minnesota's Third, Second, or Sixth. "Can't vote to re-elect the Republican incumbent" sounds a lot like that 30% undecided in a recent poll of the 2nd district race between incumbent Republican John Kline and DFL challenger Steve Sarvi; "will fight for people here" sounds like a good reduction of Ash Madia's race against Republican more-of-the-samer Erik Paulsen; the primacy of economic concerns should help El Tinklenberg against Michele Bachmann.
Last week we saw some pretty desperate tactics from Republican candidate Erik Paulsen, who's running for the congressional seat being vacated by moderate Jim Ramstad. Paulsen started airing a negative (and misleading) attack ad against Democratic opponent Ashwin Madia.
That event, in and of itself, is nothing special. There are a few interesting features, though:
The ad was paid for by Paulsen's campaign. Not an independent group, not the NRCC, but rather the Paulsen campaign itself.
That in mind, consider that the ad (which I will not reproduce here, for all its truthiness) is Paulsen's second foray into the airwaves
That's right, folks -- Paulsen took all of one ad, which never achieved full saturation across the Third district, to talk about himself in a positive way, and immediately went to the misleading, negative attacks against his opponent. This says that one or more of the following things is true:
Paulsen's internal poll numbers look really, really bad for the Republican.
Paulsen's internal poll numbers look really, really good for Madia, especially in the positives department.
Madia's TV strategy has thus far been far superior to that of his Republican opponent. I've received reports of people just outside the Third who are committed to voting for Ashwin on the basis of his TV ads -- while a quirk of the way TV ad buying works leads to people outside the district seeing the ads, it means that the Madia campaign has blanketed the district well, and is achieving full message saturation with their positive ads -- including a new one going up today, according to sources.
As for Paulsen's misleading attack ad, the Madia campaign had this to say over the weekend
Ashwin Madia supports eliminating the Bush tax cut for those making more than $250,000, so that we can balance the budget and reduce the national debt. With a nearly $500 billion deficit and a nearly $10 trillion national debt, Paulsen now proposes borrowing an additional $2 trillion to finance tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations.
Erik Paulsen has a very different set of priorities. When Minnesota was facing a mounting $4 billion deficit, he managed to find the money to raise the salaries of more than 200 well-connected political staffers at the State Capitol. He then rewarded his corporate contributors by voting to allow corporations to evade their Minnesota taxes by setting up phony headquarters off-shore. Meanwhile, he voted to eliminate heath coverage for 68,000 Minnesotans, raised fees by $1,800 on seniors in nursing homes, and even voted to cut tuition assistance for Minnesota National Guard troops returning from Iraq. He also has the distinction of voting to cut education spending for the first time in Minnesota history. Minnesotans want real change in Washington, but Erik Paulsen only promises more of the same.
Madia Campaign Manager Stu Rosenberg said the following:
"It is unfortunate that Erik Paulsen has launched the first negative ad by any candidate in this race. His new attack ad is simply an attempt to hide his own long record of putting the interests of big corporations ahead of middle class families. Minnesotans in the Third District are enthusiastically supporting Ashwin Madia's common sense proposals to balance the budget to get our economy back on track."
A poll conducted in late August by Alliance for a Better Minnesota shows Democrat Steve Sarvi pulling to within four points of incumbent Republican John Kline, 37-33, with a massive 30% undecided.
UPDATE: The poll had a margin of error of +- 4%, according to ABM Executive Director Denise Cardinal.
A long way to go, but despite a heavy financial disadvantage, Sarvi is looking at a wide-open race against the ultra-conservative Kline.
The poll also dug into the presidential and Senate races in the 2nd district, generally considered one of the more conservative areas in the state. With leaners included:
Obama (D): 46 McCain (R): 35
And the Senate race:
Al Franken (D): 42
Norm Coleman (R): 39
Keep in mind, this is only the 2nd congressional district that was polled -- this represents a pretty good result for Franken, who will run up big numbers in the urban areas in the 4th and 5th districts.
Sarvi's result is a good one, but more than 50% of respondents in the poll indicated that they had not heard much or anything about the Democratic nominee. If Obama and Franken keep up their numbers, there may be signficant coattails on the down-ballot races ("Generic Democrat" led "Generic Republican" by a score of 48-31) but Sarvi still obviously has a lot of work to do over the next six weeks.
For those who are curious (or perhaps fearful of a partisan bent to the poll), here's the party-identification breakdown of the poll's population:
That actually seems pretty even. The DFL controls a majority of the state legislative seats covering the 2nd, and has made significant gains in turnout and general political feelings in the South Metro in recent cycles.
