Public Policy Polling (7/7-8, registered voters):
R.T. Rybak (D): 43
Norm Coleman (R): 37Mark Dayton (D): 41
Norm Coleman (R): 39Margaret Anderson Kelliher (D): 34
Norm Coleman (R): 42
(MoE: ±2.5%)
Perhaps bolstered by the recent spate of reports that Norm Coleman (now in need of a new job) is considering running for Governor, PPP took a decidedly Coleman-centric approach in their first poll of next year’s Minnesota governor’s race. (Which is fine; they had to start somewhere, considering that there are at least 10 interested candidates on both the Democratic and Republican sides of the ledger, and they probably didn’t want to run a poll with 100 permutations.)
It looks like Norm Coleman may have done himself no favors by dragging out the aftermath of the Minnesota Senate race for so long. Coleman sports dreadful 38-52 favorables, and 54% of respondents say that his conduct during the post-election scrum made them less likely to vote for him (as opposed to 26% saying “more likely”). Coleman loses head-to-heads against popular Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak (who has 37-24 favorables) and even, by 2 points, against luckless former Senator Mark Dayton (who has 36-37 favorables). Coleman does manage to beat state House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher (who has only 24-33 favorables). Of course, with such wide-open fields, it seems distinctly possible that none of the persons mentioned above will be around for the general election; I’m left wondering how these same Democrats would fare against a more generic Republican.
RaceTracker: MN-Gov