MN-SEN analysis, 8/1/07

There been some significant polling coming out showing trends both nationally and for Minnesota. In the MN-SEN race to oust Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), his polling numbers have tanked as have most incumbent Republican Senators. Al Franken and Mike Ciresi have cut a 20% gap to 5%. Considering it is still 15 months out from the election, the DFL's chances of retaking Paul Wellstone's seat are looking bright.

Norm Coleman	49%
Al Franken	42%

Norm Coleman	48%
Mike Ciresi	42%

As Noah Kunin at Blanked Out points out, "The difference is within the margin of error (MOE).Remember: the MOE applies to both statistics. So if Coleman is at 49% and Franken at 42% with MOE +/- 4%, the true values might have Franken at 46% and Coleman at 45%." As any DC pundit worth his/her speaking engagement fees would point out, any incumbent below 50% more than a year out is vulnerable. If you also add in that his job approval rating stands at 43% while his disapproval is at 48%, our venerable DC pundits would and have concluded that Norm is in trouble.

Before I analyze the Survey USA poll in depth, there is some interesting national trends.

• In a poll across seven Republican-held U.S. Senate seats, the named U.S. Senators had a vote to re-elect of only 37% and were garnering only 44% of the vote against a generic challenger.
• The overall image of the Democratic Party has fallen back from the honeymoon post-election period to essentially where it stood for the whole 2006 election period -- and that has been stable since April. On the other hand, the Republicans have weakened in the current period since April to their lowest thermometer score in the past half century.

(Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

This says much about the Republican brand. It's been trashed by President Bush's Iraq War especially, but also by the Republican's culture of corruption, hubris and incompetence. Each week the Bush Administration seems to make matters worse for themselves and Democrats efforts to expose them only worsens their image. I don't find these numbers at all surprising nor do I see this trend changing.
But what about the head-to-head of Franken v. Ciresi? The Survey USA data indicates, they're virtually tied considering the margin of error.

Both are doing equally poorly among males, but both are at 50% among women. It is interesting that Norm does better with women against Franken than against Ciresi. By age categories, Ciresi does better against Norm in the 50+ crowd whereas Franken does marginally better against Norm with the less than 50 year olds.

Broken down by race, Ciresi wins by 8% while Franken loses by 12% among African-American voters -- 20% difference. This shows that Franken needs to work hard to reach out to them, while Ciresi has a nice base from which to build. In the Latino community, Al loses by 21% while Ciresi gets clobbered by 37%. This is strange even though I realize that the Latino community can be fairly conservative, because the they must not feel particularly friendly toward Republicans in general considering the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathers (i.e., the Republican base) really hate Latinos. Both candidates need to work hard to win the Latino vote and I think the Republicans will help with plenty of hate-filled immigration policy as part of their platform. Actually, the Republican Convention should solidify the Latino community in our camp once they see what the Republicans think of them close up and personal.

By party affiliation, its a virtual dead heat. Both candidates need to convince the 17% of Minnesotan DFLers that like Norm to vote for their party's candidate. I think by the next time a poll comes out, both candidates will have made headway among these Democrats who for reasons beyond my comprehension, would vote for Norm. With a national trend of more Republicans switching to identifying themselves as Independents or Dems and more Independents switching to DFL than Republican as a result of the Bush Administration's hubris, imcompetence and corruption, there are fewer Republicans generally. The most important thing for each candidate to do is strengthn their standing among DFLers.

So, let the Republicans force the moderate Republicans and independents to come to the DFL. Its not so much that Franken or Ciresi need to tailor their messages to reach out to the Independents, its more that they need to show that they are the polar opposite of Norm Coleman. Everything is setting up in this race that Norm is clearly linked to the worst President in the history of the United States. He has played along when Minnesotans wanted someone to stand up to the corruption, war-mongering, hubris and imcompetence.

They both have about 20% who are undecided. This is a nice sized contingent to convince.

While I have no doubt that Franken won't triangulate his positions to pander to some mythical swing independent voter, I hope Ciresi won't. Franken's perch as a star of Air-America put him in contact with so many people who abhor the DLC, who understand that the future is the democratic wing of the Democratic Party. While Ciresi has fought for the people who have been harmed by corporations, does he clearly understand the dangers of listening to DC pundits and DLC consultants. Does Ciresi understand why Hatch lost the governors race? Since his last Senate campaign in 2000 was a grassroots campaign, its possible he won't run a large media buy, press conference campaign but work hard on reaching out to the voters. So far he's doing that.

Ciresi does better outside of the Twin Cities especially up in the Northeast. More people are undecided about Ciresi which means he could increase his polling numbers there. Norm leads Franken by 27% in southern MN while Ciresi only trails by 17%. I imagine that Tim Walz will help whomever ends up as the DFL candidate do better in southern MN. Franken should be concerned about his non-metro numbers, but I'm sure they're working on that.

The bottom line is half the state lives in the Twin Cities and where Norm is strongest, the fewest people live -- western Minnesota.