SurveyUSA (4/30-5/1, registered voters, 3/12 in parens):
Al Franken (D): 42 (41)
Norm Coleman (R-inc): 52 (51)
Undecided: 6 (7)
(MoE: ±4%)
I haven’t bought the premise that this race is a “tossup”, and if this poll is any indication, Franken has some work to do before it can become one.
Well, we hope it is one that will BECOME a toss-up. So far I can’t see that Franken has been very successful in tying Coleman to Bush. Seems to me that it’s a pretty anti-war state. I don’t know the economy there is faring at the present. The election remains 6 months off, but it’s obvious that F has a great deal more work to do.
You mean like explaining why he didn’t pay $70K in taxes owed in 17 states? Cuz it’s gonna take a lot more than hard work to explain this one.
I think most of us are comfortable by now with the idea that Franken’s a real candidate with smart positions and his homework done, but I wonder if the general electorate in MN still isn’t convinced of that yet? Do they think he’s still the Hollywood comedian?
I don’t know, that’s a possible guess.
in quite a few states. Certainly the hope is that states like Minnesota, Maine, and Oregon will become very competitive. The polls aren’t showing it right now, but things can change over the summer, especially when our candidates start spending a lot more of their money and hopefully the Democratic presidential nominee can come around and help out too. There’s no reason why we particularly can’t win those three blue states. If we’re ever going to have an even somewhat better Senate, we need to have Democratic Senators in blue states.
I won’t pretend that it’s not disappointing to see you write off a race that, 6 months away from the election, is kept to a +10 incumbent margin after an extremely bad press week for the incumbent.
At other points in this race, Franken has been ahead or even.
Franken is a good candidate, who is not only gifted on the stump, but adept at raising money. Most of all, it is Minnesota and it’s ’08, an extremely Dem year, AND it’s Obama at the top of the ticket, who is a very popular candidate in this state – he’ll have coattails.
Claims that Ciresi would have done better are frankly silly. Ciresi is a no-name candidate who would never have generated the attention to battle Coleman. Look at Allen in Maine, who is far better known than Ciresi in MN, losing badly to Collins. Franken is our only choice, and obviously he suffered bad press this week. But given the right kind of (DSCC) support, he can absolutely beat the opportunistic Coleman.
http://www.rasmussenreports.co…
Cornyn 47 Noriega 43
Favourables:
Cornyn 50/37
Noriega 45/39
What a pity Noriega’s fundraising isn’t beter but those numbers are sensational. This is the kind of race, if it stays competitive where the DCCC could make a difference in evening up the money disparity a bit.
. . . has pissed me off from the get-go. I had a hunch at the outset that Al Franken would be, at best, a less-than-stellar candidate, and at worst, a train wreck. This tax problem could well sink him, even before the right wing starts putting out attack ads with some of Franken’s more incendiary quotations from his time in the talk radio world. This race could’ve been ours on a platter, had we run any number of candidates from Minnesota’s deep Democratic bench (Betty McCollum, R.T. Rybak, Mee Moua, Chris [no relation to Norm] Coleman, etc). Yeah, yeah, Franken can fundraise better than any of those folks, blah blah blah . . . but, I remind you that money, as our old friends John & Paul pointed out, can’t buy you love. Franken can barrage every media market in the state with ads galore, and deploy staffers to plaster every house in every neighborhood across the state with campaign paraphernalia, but if the voters don’t like him, it’s not going to make a damn bit of difference.
In 2006, I went to the premiere of Franken’s documentary in New York, where he himself gave a talk after the film. I remember walking out of there with my friends, with all of us in agreement on one thing: “I hope he doesn’t decide to run for senate after all.” If we, a bunch of east coast lefties, did not respond well to Franken’s pitch, how do we expect the swing voters of Minnesota to do so?
I do believe it was basically he trusted his accountant and the guy screwed it up, but still, looks terrible. Also, the fact is that Coleman is a canny politician, he is always there for the Republicans when they need him but will vote with the Democrats if his vote isn’t necessary. Its strategic, not principled, but it makes him tougher to pigeonhole as a far-right ideologue.
Franken’s got a long way to go.
From another site…
“Note that there are some weird crosstabs in this poll: Coleman gets 99% of the GOP vote (which seems an unlikely proposition) and Franken gets 67% of the Demoratic vote, leaving him far behind despite a 24% lead among independents.”
There’s something funny here.
Not if he respects the DFL’s endorsement. Jury is still out on that one though.
until this bad couple of weeks (the tax issue – actually a very small amount of money). There are many more weeks and many more story cycles to come.
And money can’t buy you love, but it can buy an election or two (just ask Senator Dayton or Kohl or Governor Corzine).
Just like OR, NC, or OK, we didn’t get our ideal candidate, but we can win any of these races.
I know this is a SurveyUSA poll and they are widely respected, even if they were way off on the LA-06 poll, but the crosstabs make no sense.
1. They have Coleman winning the republican vote 99-1%. Republicans even in ultra conservative states like Mississippi voted more than 1% for Kerry in 2004. No way in hell Coleman gets more than 95% of the republican vote.
2. The poll has Coleman getting 27% of the Dem vote. Baloney. I’d be stunned if he broke 20% of the dem vote. With Obama winning handily in November on the top of the ballot in MN I somehow doubt many Democrats will vote for Obama and Coleman.
3. Indies going 57-33% for Coleman? Umm… sure. Coleman will probably get more Indy votes than Franken, but not a 24% margin.
4. Note that the poll has the entire 6% of undecided being either Democrats or Independents and Republicans with 0% undecided.
The poll crosstabs are just fishy top to bottom.
frankens biggest problem is that he’s not taken seriously. ventura jumps in, and franken looks a lot more dignified by comparison.