Pollster.com

Thats odd....not in line with other polls.

this one is a serious outlier. it seems odd that franken and obama would lose 10 points when there is no reason for it, while they are gaining in other polls.

what do the internals say?

The only thing that seems a bit fishy about the crosstabs is that, although the age distribution seems fine, the way the age groups split for candidates is kind of bizarre:

18-34 Obama +4
35-49 McCain +16
50-64 Obama +5
65+ Obama +10

Why is Obama winning seniors by a larger margin than young voters, and why is there a sudden 20-25 point difference between 35-49 year olds vs. all other age groups?

I'm not saying this poll isn't legitimate, because I see no reason to say it isn't, but that's really weird.

also they knocked more than 1/8 of the sample out for their "likely voter" model... that is the "registered" voter result?

I just went and looked at the previous SUSA result for MN (9/12, O+2), and the age breakdown there was what more you would expect:

18-34 Obama +16
35-49 Even
50-64 McCain +8
65+ Obama +3

So if this poll really represents a shift in the electorate, I'd love to know what has caused Obama to lose about 12-16 points among under-50s while simultaneously gaining 7-13 points among over-50s.

I don't see Obama losing this state at all. But since McCain gave up on Michigan and is trying to possibly win this state..Obama may want to put some of his Michigan money into Minnesota,Wisconsin and PA just to make sure they're locked down.

This with DC are there only states that was Blue when Reagan won... Its not going to change now...

Now, I'm confused... again!

Hopefully with this poll McCain will pour all of his dwindling resources into MN. MN will remain deep blue this election.

Yeah right!!

Franken's running almost even, and has momentum; no way he's 10 behind. See Nate Silver's assessment of SurveyUSA over at 538, it's a garbage polling company.

Oh by the way SurveyUSA's last poll in NC has McCain up by 20. How has that one worked out for them?

Northeast and Twin Cities areas seem much too balanced. Both should lean pretty heavily Dem based on the current breakdown of state/local representatives in those regions. Also, there is no way in hell that the 18-34 year old bracket is split within the MOE.

I'm a 27 year old UMN MBA student, and I work in the energy industry. None of my age-group cohorts in either area are voting for McCain. If business students and energy industry employees are not for McCain, who are those 47% of young people who are?

why does the party affilliation not add up?

Looks like most of the national polls show Obama +5 to +7, pre-debate.

That sounds about right. McCain has run a dogsh*t campaign up until now. We'll see if they can get it together.

All of SUSA's polls are headscratchers.

The tabs seem a bit odd:
Conservative/Moderate/Liberal at 31%/43%/15%
with a R30% D37% and I21% seems very strange. That tells me there are essentially no moderate R's, but a lot of Libertarians out there to drive up the conservative tab. Very strange to have a 2x advantage of cons over libs in my MN.

Secondly, all the recent polls of Franken vs Coleman show dead heat, a 1 pt margin either way. This 10 point spread is strange as well.

CNN isn't releasing the PARTY WEIGHTINGS in their post-debate poll.

After the furor last time due to the vast over-weighting of democrats, this does not surprise me.

So neither CNN nor CBS will tell us their party weightings.

'cha right.

@MNLatteLiberal:

Don't get flustered man. I don't take SUSA seriously even when the news is good :)

53-43 NH (RR)
52-41 NH (Univ)
49-46 Nat (GWU)
51-44 Nat (RR)
51-40 Nat (R2000)
48-42 Nat (Diago)
plus 2 polls +3 in NC. Now this poll with Sydney leading in the Blue Blue state of MN? Now I remember from my Sesame Street days the fun game of one these thing does not belong, "one these things is not like the others..."

Of course an alternate explanation is that MN love the Caribou Barbi accent and feel overwhelmingly she is one of their own?

WOW, THIS IS COOL, I WANT ONE!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/10/03/dlscreen103.xml

P.S., 6 months ago, when the doctors first told me I had cancer, my first thought was, "darn, I'm not gonna get to see all the cool stuff in the next 25 years!"

Lol, I'm something if a gadget geek.

SUSA was really solid during the primaries, but they've had some deeply weird results lately. I'm not sure what's up with them, but I'll wait to see some other polls from Minnesota before I worry about this one.

@EarBucket:

"SUSA was really solid during the primaries, but they've had some deeply weird results lately. I'm not sure what's up with them, but I'll wait to see some other polls from Minnesota before I worry about this one.

Don't they use some bizarre polling methods?

I am not by any means suggesting that this poll is flawed. However, I don't see neither McCain nor Obama running to MN, and that by itself tells me a lot. I don't analyze polls in a vacuum. I look at the polls, all the them, and see how campaigns behave. The polls from MN, the vast majority of them, and the behavior of the McCain and the Obama campaign tells me that their internals are showing the state pretty safe for Obama.

Remember all our arguing about MI? Well, the McCain campaign pulled out. Guys, these people have far more information than us. When public polls come out showing X or Y, these campaigns already knew about it. This people are into serious business. Obviously McCain internals in Michigan were not showing him within "the margin of error." Most probable, the guy was trailing badly. Campaign strategists are pragmatic and cold.

I will pay attention to what the McCain campaign does in MN. If McCain starts campaigning there, something is going on. If McCain doesn't go there, forget it...things are not going well for him. We'll see.

With the polls from Rasmussen and St. As for NH this AM, MN might be McCain's best/only hope to pick up a former Kerry state.

Stand by for another correction?

@boomshak:

Hey boom if you want a biased VP debate poll go to foxnews. The bottom line is even conservatives admit Biden won, Palin just didn't make it worst

Question of the Day (FOXNEWS)
Who won the vice presidential debate Thursday?

Sarah Palin 41%

Joe Biden 59%

Total Voters:218455

http://elections.foxnews.com/
Let me know how you spin this one

Boomshak,

The post debate polls sample "undecided voters," not the population at large. So party weighting is not really important because there is no established weighting of the party affiliations for undecided voters.

I meant worse***

A GENERAL COMMENT:

You guys do all realize that all of the time we spend here is a complete waste, right?

No one's mind will be changed, no votes will be gotten or lost. We all just want our 5 minutes to pontificate and pretend our small little lives actually matter to complete strangers.

We are not activists, they are too busy knocking on doors or making phone calls to waste time here.

We are political armchair quarterbacks, commentating on the actions taken by others.

What a glorious waste :)

A GENERAL COMMENT:

You guys do all realize that all of the time we spend here is a complete waste, right?

No one's mind will be changed, no votes will be gotten or lost. We all just want our 5 minutes to pontificate and pretend our small little lives actually matter to complete strangers.

We are not activists, they are too busy knocking on doors or making phone calls to waste time here.

We are political armchair quarterbacks, commentating on the actions taken by others.

What a glorious waste :)

oops, pardon the double post - computer glitch.

Also, regarding SUSA, if you look back at every presidential poll done in MN since June, virtually the only ones that were close were SUSA. Something about their methodology is consistently better for McCain.

@IndependentThinker:
@boomshak:

Hey boom if you want a biased VP debate poll go to foxnews. The bottom line is even conservatives admit Biden won, Palin just didn't make it worst

Question of the Day (FOXNEWS)
Who won the vice presidential debate Thursday?

Sarah Palin 41%

Joe Biden 59%

Total Voters:218455

http://elections.foxnews.com/
Let me know how you spin this one

IF YOU WANT TO STUMP ME, YOU'LL HAVE TO DO BETTER:

1. The poll was in a very obscure place and I am sure most FoxNews viewers didn't even know it was there. For instance, there was no link to it on the cover page.
2. FoxNews did run a Text Messaging Poll after the debate with over 1 million votes cast. Palin won that with 86% of the vote.
3. Drudge ran an Internet Poll and Palin won 2:1.

Sorry, you've been bought, used up and sold as scrap.

Boom, thanks for the friendly hand. I appreciate it. And btw, just to be clear, I, boomshack-like, do not see this poll as bad news either. And to disagree a bit with carl29, I welcome McCain campaign to sink their resources they are pulling out of MI into MN. I mean, WI is just across the river, why not go the extra mile?

I see McCain campaign in a panic driven tailspin. The old man's reaction has been knee-jerk and uncalculated, emotional stunts. Suspending, unsuspending, rescuing, agreeing with the bailout, then calling for the President to veto it, pulling out, etc., etc.. They could very well respond to this poll as a man clutching for straws. If so, we in MN welcome them. Just remember to bring the barracuda, she really helps energize the overwhelmingly Democratic base and the ensures that the primaries record turn out is duplicated at the polls next month.

If 3 more polls show McCain either winning in MN or within 3 points of Obama, I'll believe the state is in play. For now, this looks like a serious outlier. Similar to the recent polls from MI and IA that have shown the race tied, even with most other polls showing Obama's lead close to double digits.

Actualy boom, and I can't speak for anyone else here, I am active in registering new voters (and unlike my friends, I don't wear Obama shirts or pins and don't try to sway anyone any way when doing that), and also doing some volunteer stuff for the Obama campaign. I can't say I personally am making a "huge" difference, but I am doing something.

@MNLatteLiberal:

Obama's campaign is PRO-ACTIVE. McCain's campaign is RE-ACTIVE. That's why Obama is winning.

I would actually like Obama if I didn't know that his recent "foxhole-conversion" to being a moderate is a steaming pile of expedient horsesh*t and that he will revert back to his liberal roots once he is elected and is unopposed in Congress.

MN will stay blue. The demographics do not work out in McCain's favor. Franken has pulled close enough to Coleman (although I still think Coleman holds on) to negate a potential negative effect of a +10 or +15 Coleman advantage, like earlier polls were showing.

The scariest part of an Obama win to me is the courts. he will appoint liberal judges who feel it is their duty to "legislate from the bench".

I hate it when 75% of the people vote for something, then some liberal judge just sweeps it all away with the stroke of a pen.

If Obama wins, get used to a lot of that.

THE SCARIEST THING:
Today's liberals acren't the same breed as we had during the days of Kennedy. Today's left is dominated by activists born and raised at DailyKos. Their numbers are smaller but they make a bigger noise that your garden variety Democrat.

Give these people absolute power and watch out. Read dailyKos sometime and tell me if you want those people to have control over every aspect of your lives.

@boomshak

"2. FoxNews did run a Text Messaging Poll after the debate with over 1 million votes cast. Palin won that with 86% of the vote."

Obviously you don't bother to know the party weighting of those 1 million people because the outcome meets your wish, right?
However you question the CNN/CBS party weighting poll, cool ...
As your boss said yesterday 'Life isn't fair!' and you just proved it

OK, I'm speachless.

@MNLatteLiberal,

First of all, Hi. In no way am I saying that the McCain campaign is in good shape, quite the opposite. I think that now they are realizing that they are running out of states and electorate votes, let alone time and money. Why do you think they going after Maine's 2nd district?

My argument was about the campaign behavior vs. public polls. I find politics fascinating because is much more complex and analitical than it may seem. For example, when McCain strarted aring ads here in Florida, I shared with you my impression about that move. I took McCain's move as a clear sign that indeed Obama was making up ground in the state. In the following days, poll after poll my "suspicion" became a reality, indeed Obama was making up ground in the Sunshine state. Do you think that the McCain campaign didn't know about Obama's improvement in the state? Do you think that campaigns wait until SurveyUsa, Rasmussen, and any other public pollster comes out with numbers to have an idea as to how things are going? I don't think so. Those people have far more information than us.

If MN is indeed in play for McCain, I bet the farm that McCain will campaign vigoriously in the state within the next days, in addition to increasing ad spending. So far, Obama is investing virtually nothing in that state, so it seems that they are pretty confident. I want to see more polls out of MN and see Obama's and McCain's moves. We'll see :-)

For the GOP, Minnesota is the "tease" every four years. Polls leading up to election day always show it close, then the Dem wins by a somewhat comfortable margin.

Even in off year elections, MN outperforms its polls. in 2006, all polling showed Amy Klobuchar with a small lead over her GOP rival. On election day, however, it ended up being a total blow-out for Klobuchar.

One poll is not a trend, it's an outlier. If we see a couple of more showing this, we can call it a trend.

carl29:

i agree totally about the strategies being fascinating, kind of like a chess game.

Like your FL, McCain has started ads here in Indiana this week. If I were a Republican, I would take that as a bad sign. Indiana is one of the most reliable Republican states. For a Republican to have to fight for Indiana this late in the game is a BAD omen.

At first, I thought Obama spending time and resources here was just a bit of hubris. Then we saw multiple polls showing the race nearly even.For the first time in my life, I've had door-to-door canvassers in my neighborhood and have bee recieving direct mail from presidential candidates. I find it amazing (and fun, I'll admit).

Guys, this is what I was refering to:

"McCain campaign shifts assets to Indiana"
Friday, October 03, 2008 | 9:54 AM

"In another sign of McCain's woes, his campaign signaled that it would counter Obama's efforts in Indiana, a state that hasn't voted for a Democrat since 1964."

"In Indiana, surveys show a competitive race after Obama spent months pouring money into the state and Republicans resisted countering. Now the Republican National Committee is running TV ads to fight for the state's 11 votes, and McCain senior adviser Greg Strimple said: "We're going to go there."

See? A poll by itself doesn't tell the whole story. Polls+Campaign behavior= Better picture.
For months, you know how skeptical I have been about Obama's chances in IN; now, I am more optimistic since the RNC/McCain seem a little defensive in the state.

carl29:

WILL YOU PLEASE GET OUT OF MY BRAIN!!!!!!!!! : )

Yes, Hoosier. Totally fascinating. I feel like a little girl in a playground :-)

@carl29

They seemingly started running ads in IN 10 days or so ago, that could mean that their internal polls show better news for Obama in this state than other external pollsters do.
I think they're running out of time

boomshak:
"
The scariest part of an Obama win to me is the courts. he will appoint liberal judges who feel it is their duty to "legislate from the bench".

I hate it when 75% of the people vote for something, then some liberal judge just sweeps it all away with the stroke of a pen.
"

Then you understand nothing about the law. Any law must be constitutional. That is the supreme courts responsibility. Where you home schooled Boomshak?

I heard that Palin is going to North Carolina next week. Um, um, um...not a good sign for McCain. A Republican candidate shouldn't be defending North Carolina in October.

What is happening with McCain reminds me of "The Hare and the Tortoise." The McCain campaign laughed about Obama efforts in all those red states. Well, they let the Tortoise go little by little gaining ground and now they have to defend many fronts. Kids, there is a lesson to be learned.

I saw this today. It is in Georgia, but the it shows the level of energy among African Americans, think about North Carolina and Virginia:

"The Secretary of State's office says 39 percent of Georgia's 194,138 early voters are black, signaling what could be a promising sign for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel's office says as of Wednesday 74,961 early voters are black. Figures from Oct. 1 show blacks make up 29 percent of registered voters in the state. They cast 25 percent of the total votes in the
presidential election four years ago."

Hmmm, a somewhat off-trend poll. Not only does it have McCain up by a point but it has Coleman up by 10 against Franken, where almost every other poll has them nearly tied. The poll has only 15% Liberals (compared to 24%/25% in the 04/06 exit polls) and a near tie in the Twin Cities which suggests that perhaps there is a bad sample from this area. Hopefully we will see with further polls.

Not sure I believe this poll is accurate. But if it were, and because MN is such a Blue state, then if this poll is true, expect to see a McCain surge like you've never seen before. But I doubt that's coming. I'm just saying that if McCain could win MN then the election will be a laugher for him.

The Palin accent?

THIS POLL IS OBVIOUSLY TRASH! These results are outliers by such a wide margin and results by age bracket make no sense. I think they drank a little too much Palin Kool Aid last night.

I think y'all are going pretty far to call SUSA a "trash" organization.

The poll can be an outlier without the pollster's methods coming into question.

Not trash, just an outlier.

Proven by the fact that SurveyUSA is the ONLY organization to ever show McCain with a lead over Obama.

This is good news for McCain at a time when he needs it!

BTW, Sarah Palin is back!!!!!

RCP Average 09/14 - 10/01 -- 49.8 44.8 Obama +5.0

SurveyUSA 09/30 - 10/01 725 LV 46 47 McCain +1
CNN/Time 09/28 - 09/30 849 LV 54 43 Obama +11
Quinnipiac/WSJ/WP 09/14 - 09/21 1301 LV 47 45 Obama +2
Rasmussen 09/18 - 09/18 500 LV 52 44 Obama +8

I'd need to see more polls. Let's hope more come out in the coming days.

In answer to Connor's question about Palin's accent - it's no accident she sounds like she's from Wisconsin or Minnesota - in the New Deal, the Matanuska Valley in Alaska was settled by farmers from the northern parts of those states (where the land sold to them as good farmland turned out to be terrible) by the government as a means of avoiding a rural poverty trap in the northern parts of those states - so a huge number of midwesterners settled in the Matanuska area, which is where Palin is from. It's a pretty normal accent for people from that area of Alaska.

carl29, I understand what you are saying about the campaign internals. And to a point I agree with you. My point, however, is that of late (last couple of weeks) McCampaign has been making rather odd, not completely thought out, erratic and emotional moves. I cited examples.

They have had their eye on MN like Obama on CO. Hence the respective conventions. Then, before the meltdown, a couple of weeks ago, a couple of polls came out that painted MN yellow on the map. And boom - the next day, there is Palin with the old man in Blaine, MN for a morning cameo.

They look at MN and salivate. They might no longer have the resources to go after it, but in no way do they realize, how quixotic their fight would be. They are still going after WI because sans MI, WI becomes a must-have.

Bottom line:
McCampaign for the last couple of weeks has not been running strictly on internals, which they undeniably have and which are just as undeniably not as good as Obama's (vis a vis the candidates' methods/message to appeal to the undecided). Emotional and knee-jerk McCain influence shines through more and more translucently though the overall opacity of the campaign internals.

sotonightthatimightsee: Where'd she go and where is she back to?

NO!!! This poll can't be correct! Minnesota hasn't gone for a Republican since Nixon!

@boomshak

Wow, you are speaking intelligently today. I am saying "wow, I will now call him 'boomshak' as he wishes to be called. He is being a reasonable guy. A partisan, but reasonable. He should try doing this more often. Makes the conversation more interesting for everyone."

You said: "Today's liberals acren't the same breed as we had during the days of Kennedy. Today's left is dominated by activists born and raised at DailyKos. Their numbers are smaller but they make a bigger noise that your garden variety Democrat."

Which Kennedy? If you're speaking of JFK, certainly. JFK was, in a way, the original neo-con (though his Vietnam withdrawal plan shows a heavier grounding in realism). His successor was far more "liberal" in his economic and cultural policies. LBJ's Vietnam policy however was ardent rightwingism.

If you're speaking of RFK, I think you're absolutely wrong. RFK-liberalism only had one real candidate until Obama (McGovern, as RFK was never his party's nominee and probably would not have been even had he lived).

However, I think todays young liberals have more in common with FDR liberalism than 1970s/1980s liberalism. Their focus is more on economics than cultural bunk: simultaneously level-headed and radical.

MNLatteLiberal,

I completely agree with your take on McCain's desperate/erratic behavior. I think that at this point they are trying to re-enact Bush's 2004 map; however, Obama has put so many of those states in play that McCain doesn't know where to start. They let Obama run a little too long that now they have to defend republican states like NC, VA, CO, and IN, for goodness sake!!!

My point about MN is that I wouldn't put that state in play based on a single poll that shows McCain ahead by 1%, coming from the only pollster that has shown McCain ahead in the entire campaign season. Seven different pollsters have polled MN and none of them, except for SurveyUsa has ever shown McCain ahead.

Out of 29 different polls from 7 different pollsters, these are the only ones that have shown McCain ahead in the state since December of last year:

SurveyUSA 09/30 - 10/01 725 LV 46 47 McCain +1
SurveyUSA 03/14 - 03/16 532 46 47 McCain +1
SurveyUSA 01/20 - 01/21 550 RV 42 49 McCain +7
SurveyUSA 12/13 - 12/15 556 RV 41 50 McCain +9

As to right now, McCain's chances in MN are 10%.

This is the spending of both campaigns in TV ads:

For the month of September
Minnesota McCain $472,000 Obama $18,000*

* Money spent by the Obama campaign in Minnesota was in the Rochester market,
which also covers parts of northern Iowa.

Now, compare Wisconsin
Wisconsin McCain $487,000 Obama $432,000

I believe that the Obama campaign felt that Wisconsin needed a little more of "reinforcement," but MN? They don't look to worry about it.

I hope you're right, Latte. I think Palin is someone many Minnesotans can identify with. Especially since she has our accent. She sounds more Minnesotan than Pawlenty!

Hoosier,

I'm originally from Noble County, Indiana (and still have dozens of relatives who live in NE Indiana), so I know how long it's been since Indiana voted for the Democratic party nominee (three times in the last 92 years, and zero times since 1964). Hopefully, this year will be the fourth time since before the US entered World War I.

I've been talking to some of those relatives. Many at first liked the novelty of being hit with the campaigns this year, but now some of them are seeing the ads, the flyers, the door-to-door campaigners as not so novel and are starting to get a bit tired of it all.

My comment to them? You've been too insulated for too long! Hahaha!

I'd like to remind everyone that Dukakis was up something like 17% in the polls 5 weeks before the election. EVERYONE assumed that Bush was dead and it would be a laugher. Don't get too excited for Obama yet. Keep working, talking, convincing, etc.

couseydee,

I would have thougth that if SurveyUsa had shown different numbers for Obama vs. McCain in MN. However, if you put together each and every poll, you will realize that those have been SurveyUsa's numbers in the state, since long before Palin were a thought in anybody's mind.

These are SurveyUsa's numbers with LIKELY voters in MN:

SurveyUSA 09/30 - 10/01 725 LV 46 47 McCain +1
SurveyUSA 09/10 - 09/11 734 LV 49 47 Obama +2
SurveyUSA 08/13 - 08/14 682 LV 47 45 Obama +2
SurveyUSA 06/13 - 06/16 543 LV 47 46 Obama +1

As you can see McCain support has constantly been between 45-47% of support way before Ms. Palin. If she made an impact, it doesn't look like wow!!!!

Still, Obama really has to ramp things up in the midwest. I think my head would explode if Minnesota turned red.

@nick-socal

Um, I'm pretty sure that you're incorrect. Around the time of their first debate, Bush led Dukakis by around 6 pts.

I stand corrected and blame Tom Hartman for the bad dates :) He said that it was five weeks to the election that Dukakis was up 17%. So my bad for not cross referencing Hartman. However, his point was it was the Willy Horton ads that killed Dukakis. So my point is, don't get complacent. Fight on. And the RNC/McCain will probably try to come out with their version of the Willy Horton ad. Don't assume they don't have anything.

The Democrats appoint Supreme Court Justices who almost always rule in favor of the individual as opposed to the rights of the state or federal government in cases involving our first ammendment rights, our 4th ammendment rights to privacy, civil rights, and our fundamental freedoms guaranteed to us all by the U.S. Constitution.

The Republicans appoint Justices who wittle away at, and eventually destroy our individual freedoms, rights to privacy, and civil rights. I don't like fascism and the Republican fascist-like agenda.

The Democrats, and NOT the Repubicans, are the party of individual freedom. The Earl Warren Supreme Court of the 1950's and 1960s, considered our most liberal court ever, gave us all many of the individual freedoms and rights to privacy that we take for granted today.

Giving us the individual freedoms guaranteed to us all by the U.S. Constitution and siding with the rights of the individual is not "activism." It is called "freedom." The Republicans appoint Supreme Court Justices who are true "activists" by limiting our freedoms here in the "land of the free."

VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA AND LETS GET A DEMOCRAT WIN IN NOVEMBER!

@nick-socal

The problem is that they already used their Willie Horton ad (Wright). They blew their wad.

carl29 and cousydee (to some extent :).
First of all, a belated hello. (where are my manners?!)
Secondly, carl29, that's what a rational, logical decision maker would do, avoid MN, realizing that MN is a trap.

But we'll just have to see how McCain plays it. I watched his interview with DesMoines Register a couple of days back. This is not a cool and collected man; this is a rattled and tired and irritable creature, who snaps back when cornered by media. Another interview like that or "gotcha journalism" and we might see a complete McMeltdown.

cousydee, as much as I'd love to see Obama for the third time (yes, my wife and I stood hours in line both times), I don't think he'll come. LaCrosse a couple of days ago is as close as he is going to come, methinks.

McCain +1 is throwing everyone off kilter. Just look at the frequencies for ideology. This sample is far too conservative relative to 2004 exit poll. In addition, comparisons with 2004 will understate Obama because of significant Democratic voter registration and expected high turnouts. If New Hampshire is blue, and Nevada goes blue, it is over if Obama wins Minnesota.

True Paul, I'm going out tomorrow to get people registered. Plus, Minnesota is one of the few states that has same day registration.