New Poll: Dayton expands lead in race for MN Governor (KARE 11)

[geardaddy]

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=879278

SAINT PAUL, Minn. - Mark Dayton is expanding his lead in the race for Minnesota Governor, according to the latest MPR News/Humphrey Institute Poll released Thursday morning.

[dodger501]

1. How does one explain this?

I am looking a gift horse in the mouth, here.
Emmer is definitely Pawlenty 2.0 but with the barrage of ads (I saw 3 anti-Dayton and/or Horner ads just during breakfast) and Dayton not being the ideal candidate, how could this be?
I want to say "there are so few haters/goobers in Minnesota but I know better than that.

[qb]

2. I think Minnesotans see the lack of substance in Emmer's campaign.

I saw video of Pawlenty speaking (belatedly) on behalf of Emmer. Here's what he said (paraphrased):
"Dayton for governor... ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!"
Also in the scene was a poster that said "Emmer: You Betcha!"

Embarrassingly lame, imo.

[raven42]

3. Good news

The only weird thing is the large number of undecideds (20%)this late in the race. But it looks like the pollster decided not to include leaners in the totals for each candidate. Even including those it looks like Dayton has a solid lead.

[geardaddy]

7. I saw a couple of sorority types

last Saturday at the U, while I was standing line for Pres. Obama wearing buttons that said that.

[Mnpaul]

18. Emmer is another Palin

He has a few buzzwords he keeps repeating over and over. When caught outside his buzzwords(like the debate the other night) he has no answers,

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Horner is probably taking more votes from Emmer than from Dayton.

Emmer is so batshit crazy that Horner presents an acceptable choice for the few remaining Republicans who haven't completely lost their minds but who still can't quite bring themselves to vote for Dayton. The result, of course, is that Emmer loses, which is a very good thing. Even if Horner won, which he won't, that result would be much better than an Emmer victory. Emmer would make us wish we had Pawlenty back. Also, while Dayton might not be the ideal candidate, he has a lot of name recognition. And I'm wondering, too, whether all that horrendously negative anti-Dayton advertising might be backfiring on the teabaggers.

[trotsky]

8. How could it not backfire?

They've run the SAME smears over and over and over since Dayton won the nomination. "America's Worst Senator" ... "Gave himself an F" ... yada yada. Nothing new, just the same attacks. Eventually you're just playing to your whackjob teabag base and everyone else has tuned you out.

[DFLforever]

5. Dayton is out polling Emmer and Horner in outstate MN

I doubt any other DFL candidate, ideal or not, could have done that.

[dodger501]

6. If that's true, I agree

[myrna minx]

9. That's because Dayton actually pays attention to people in

greater Minnesota. This is great news. :woohoo:

[glinda]

10. Mark has visited parts of out state and northern MN for quit a few years now.

He has cared what is going on with people there for a long time, not when it is just convenient.

[ISUGRADIA]

11. Agree!

Dayton has a 30 year record statewide, Emmer can't even be financially responcible with his own house.

[dflprincess]

12. In areas other than the Range?

The DFL still does pretty well up there - other outstate areas, not so much.

I've never understood why the farming areas of the state are so Republican. Until the day he died my uncle(in-law) said he always voted DFL because his dad said they would have lost their farm if it wasn't for FDR and the Democrats.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. I trace it back to the early 1980s and the farm foreclosure crisis

The Democrats still had majorities, even with Reagan elected, and they could have provided relief for farmers hit by the double whammy of high interest rates and low prices for their products, but they didn't.

Farmers borrow against the coming year's earnings in order to finance the purchase of seed, equipment, and new animals, and if interest rates are high and earnings from their products are low, they're in trouble.

The Dems could have offered low-interest refinancing of the loans that were killing family farmers, and even if Reagan had vetoed it, the Dems would have had something to jump up and down about and say, "See? We wanted to help you, but the Republicans won't let us!"

But they did nothing, and the Republicans moved in with the kind of paranoid fear-mongering that seems to work well among economically distressed people.

[dflprincess]

14. I think it goes back further than that

my mom says her hometown was always Republican, even during the Depression.

One of my friend's grandparents were all farmers in northern Minnesota not the easiest place to fand they (along with her parents, aunts & uncles) were all Republican. Her parents were the first Depression era people I met that didn't love FDR. Though, in fairness, her grandparents were more Theodore Roosevelt Republicans but you think they would have wised up after Hoover. That area of the state is still one of the poorer counties and it's still Republican. Go figure.

[a kennedy]

15. but, then there's this.....KSTP poll: Emmer, Dayton in dead heat

Democrats buoyed by a string of polls showing Mark Dayton pulling ahead by a healthy margin got a sobering report Thursday night: A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll shows Dayton up by 1 point over Republican Tom Emmer in the race for governor. Independence party candidate Tom Horner got 13 percent, with 6 percent undecided. It’s the first SurveyUSA poll in Minnesota to include cell phone users.

The poll found that both Dayton and Emmer had strong support from their bases with 78 percent of DFLers for Dayton and 76 percent of Republicans for Emmer. Independents liked Emmer and Dayton evenly at 37 percent. Self-described moderates broke for Dayton by a 2-to-1 margin, and tea partiers liked Emmer at 25 to 1. Emmer led among men and voters under 50. Dayton took women and voters over 50. Dayton had more support in the Twin Cities and Iron Range while Emmer out-polled him elsewhere.

“Impossible to say who has the late advantage in the Minnesota Governor’s race, according to SurveyUSA’s final pre-election tracking poll for KSTP-TV in Minneapolis,” the pollster says. “DFL candidate Mark Dayton has never trailed, but neither in 3 polls has he led by more than 5 points.”

On cell-phone-only voters, “CPO respondents account for 15% of likely voters. Unlike the findings in some academic research, and unlike SurveyUSA data in California, CPO respondents in Minnesota are not politically different than respondents interviewed on their home phones.”

http://minnesotaindependent.com/73306/kstp-poll-emmer-dayton-in-dead-heat

[geardaddy]

16. Yeah, I saw that.

[trotsky]

17. Ultra-right-wing Republican-owned Hubbard mouthpiece KSTP...

has a poll showing the race close? What are the odds, I tell ya?

[dflprincess]

19. I saw a clip on KSTP's 10 o'clock news last night - apparently Jon Voight was in town for an Emmer

rally. The only clip they showed was Voight saying "Obama isn't a Democrat - he's a RADICAL SOCIALIST"

Which only proves that Jon Voight is even dumber than his character in "Midnight Cowboy".

[Mister Ed]

20. One meme I've heard them repeating since last Thursday...

"Our latest SurveyUSA poll shows TOM EMMER HAS PULLED EVEN WITH MARK DAYTON
(in the 1st Congressional District of Southeastern Minnesota although the same poll also shows Democrat Tim Walz eight points ahead of his Republican opponent but if you extrapolate these CD1 poll results to the state as a whole then)
IT LOOKS AS THOUGH TOM EMMER MAY TAKE THE GOVERNORSHIP!"

By cherry-picking and twisting poll results like this, I think they're trying to create the impression that Emmer has a good chance of winning, so that conservative supporters of Tom Horner might switch their votes to Emmer at the last minute.

[dflprincess]

21. On the other hand,

it might get Dayton's supporters out. If they think it's that close no one will decide that Mark is far enough ahead they can get complacent about getting to the polls.

[geardaddy]

22. Hubbard Broadcasting is crap.

I can't stand them.