New SurveyUSA poll, Dayton widens lead

A new KSTP/SurveyUSA poll was released last night and it shows Mark Dayton solidifying his lead in the DFL primary to be held on Tuesday.

Unlike the previously released StarTribune poll that many people criticized for its small sample size, this poll doesn’t suffer from that issue and it confirms what pretty much every other poll of this race has shown, including that StarTribune poll; Mark Dayton has a commanding lead that will be difficult for the other candidates to overcome.

Here are the toplines with the numbers from the previous SurveyUSA poll in parenthesis.



Dayton is the only candidate who has shown any significant movement from the last poll and he continues to poll at or around 40%. There is almost no way either of the other two candidates can win with Dayton pulling over 40% unless there is a mass exodus of support from Matt Entenza to Margaret Anderson Kelliher which seems very unlikely at this point.

Here’s the updated primary GPI:



This is the biggest lead that Dayton has held in the GPI up till now.

There is also a change in the general election numbers, with Dayton pulling in front of the other DFLers against Emmer and Horner.



Kelliher is +6 against Tom Emmer, Entenza is +5, but Mark Dayton is +14, an increase of 11 points since the last SurveyUSA poll. Now most of that is probably due to Tom Emmer himself and his imploding campaign, but it appears that Dayton is also doing better than the other DFLers among Horner voters and undecided voters.

Here’s the update general election GPI: