Final GPI; Dayton with a 5 point lead

Here is the final GPI.



Additionally Nate Silver puts Mark Dayton's odds of winning at 86% and his weighted average is virtually identical to the one above.

Mark Dayton has lead the entire month of October by about five points, but this race will all come down to turnout. The DFL has the advantage in that regard, we just need to capitalize on it.

That said, there is still a 14% chance that everyone is wrong. One of the data points that makes up that 14% is of course the 2006 Minnesota Governor's race. In that contest Mike Hatch had a three point lead in the simple polling average 45.5-42.5 and lost 46-47, a four point swing for Tim Pawlenty.

To avoid that fate again we need to GOTV like mad. So everyone who doesn't have anything to do today, GOTV.

One more quick thing about that PPP poll

In my rush to get the GPI update up last night before heading off to a series of Halloween parties, I overlooked something interesting in the crosstabs. That is, who people that have already voted, voted for. Those numbers are:

Public Policy Polling (10/30, those who have voted, no trend lines):

Mark Dayton (D): 55
Tom Emmer (R): 36
Tom Horner (I): 6

It's not a huge part of the sample, only 9%, but still a good indicator for Mark Dayton.

That is all.

GPI update; PPP 's first MN-Gov poll shows a small Dayton lead

Public Policy Polling (10/30, likely voters, no trend lines):

Mark Dayton (D): 43
Tom Emmer (R): 40
Tom Horner (I): 15
Undecided: 3
(MoE: ±2.2%)

A few things about this poll that should be noted. One, PPP interviewed 2,058 likely voters for a tiny 2.2% margin of error. This is the largest sample any pollster has yet taken of the Minnesota Governor's race and it should make us that much more confident in the results.

GPI update; SurveyUSA goes cellphone style, GPI stabilizes

SurveyUSA (10/28, likely voters, 10/14 in parentheses):

Mark Dayton (D): 39 (42)
Tom Emmer (R): 38 (37)
Tom Horner (I): 13 (14)
Undecided: 6 (4)
(MoE: ±4%)

This is the first poll in a while thats shown Mark Dayton below 40% and while his numbers have slipped since the last SUSA poll, that could just be float within the margin of error rather than a decline.

GPI update; Emmer below 30 again

MPR/Humphrey (10/28, likely voters, 9/29 in parentheses):

Mark Dayton (D): 41 (38)
Tom Emmer (R): 29 (27)
Tom Horner (I): 13 (16)
Undecided: 20 (20)
(MoE: ±5.5%)

MPR released it's last poll of the Governor's race this morning and they don't find a whole lot has changed since last time, other than Horner losing a few points to the other two candidates, which other polls had already shown.

If the undecided number seems high, it is, but The Humphrey Institute lumps undecided into the same category as "don't know," "refused," and "voting for someone else." It would be nice to see what the undecided number is all on it's lonesome.

GPI update; another day, another poll

St. Cloud St. U (10/25, likely voters, no trend lines):

Mark Dayton (D): 40
Tom Emmer (R): 30
Tom Horner (I): 19
Undecided: 5
(MoE: ±5%)

While the initial reaction to this poll might be to think that Tom Horner is back in the thick of it, there are reasons to be skeptical.

GPI update; the Horner slide confirmed

StarTribune (PSRI) (10/24, likely voters, 9/26 in parentheses):

Mark Dayton (D): 41 (39)
Tom Emmer (R): 34 (30)
Tom Horner (I): 13 (18)
Undecided: 12 (12)
(MoE: ±3.9%)

This is now the third pollster to show Tom Horner sliding from his high-water mark of 18% down into the low teens, so it's clear that he has lost support, the question now becomes weather he can hold onto what he's got left or if the slide continues.

GPI update; Horner's slide continues

Rasmussen (10/22, likely voters, 10/6 in parentheses):

Mark Dayton (D): 44 (40)
Tom Emmer (R): 41 (38)
Tom Horner (I): 10 (15)
Undecided: 4 (5)
(MoE: ±4%)

This is the third poll in a row to show Mark Dayton with a 2-4 point lead over Tom Emmer and Tom Horner losing support since the last poll by the same pollster, although by a much more significant margin than we've previously seen. Despite what I wrote yesterday, there is now reason to believe that Tom Horner's support is in fact eroding, similar to what happened to Tim Penny in 2002, although I would certainly like to see another poll showing him this low before jumping to any conclusions.

GPI update; SurveyUSA is back in the field

SurveyUSA (10/14, likely voters, 9/15 in parentheses):

Mark Dayton (D): 42 (38)
Tom Emmer (R): 37 (36)
Tom Horner (I): 14 (18)
Undecided: 4 (4)
(MoE: ±3.7%)

This is confirmation of where the current average has the race, although there are a few things about the poll itself worth pointing out.

GPI update; Ras now says no to leaners

Rasmussen (10/6, likely voters, 9/22 in parentheses):

Mark Dayton (D): 40 (34)
Tom Emmer (R): 38 (36)
Tom Horner (I): 15 (18)
Undecided: 5 (2)
(MoE: ±4%)

A few things change with this update of the GPI, the first of which is something truly radical, standardizing the way I format new poll results. I put a lot of thought into what the most effective way to do it would be and after careful deliberation I decided to crib Swing State Project's poll formatting style, so if it looks familiar you know who to blame.

GPI update; what happened to a tight race?

MPR/Humphrey released a new poll of the governor's race today and it's good news for the blue team. Not only do they show Mark Dayton with an 11 point edge, 38-27, the internals paint an even better picture.

• Minnesota voters have awoken from their summer slumber. More than 8 out of 10 Minnesotans are interested in the November elections, a substantial increase that is being propelled by the energizing of formerly turned-off Democrats.

•Horner is crippling Emmer's campaign, soaking up one-fifth of Republican voters while taking only half as much from Dayton.

• Dayton is tapping voter frustration and appears better positioned among voters who have not yet declared their support for a candidate.

GPI update; mo' polls mo' problems

The StarTribune released a poll of the governor's race on Sunday with very different results from the last three polls to come out on the race, but with almost exactly the same results as their previous, pre-primary poll. So what's going on here?

First I'll update the GPI and then we can get into the poll itself.



With the inclusion of the Rasmussen poll last week Tom Emmer had gotten as close as he's been in a while, with this update he's lost ground. Looking back at all the polls of this cycle you see a definate pattern, Mark Dayton is polling anywhere from around 41-35, Tom Emmer is polling around 36-30 and Tom Horner is polling around 18-10. The only recent poll that has shown a number outside these ranges was Rasmussen showing Tom Emmer at 42 last week.

It might be that the Rasmussen poll was an outlier or it could have something to do with their pushing of leaners, but even before pushing leaners they were showing Emmer ahead 36-34, which was Emmer's first lead in a poll since a May Rasmussen poll. More likely than not it's just a case of Rasmussen being Rasmussen and showing a GOP advantage.

GPI update; the new normal

Let's just get to it:





That's three polls in a row showing essentially a tied race, regardless of whatever issues some of us may have with some of these polls, an even evenly split electorate seems to be the new normal of the Minnesota Governors race.

While I usually agree with Joe, I don't have a problem with Rasmussen pushing leaners in this poll. As this old fivethrityeight post points out, most pollsters will push leaners to some degree or another and publish the with leaners and without leaners results, usually using the with leaners for their top lines. In the end most leaners will end up voting their lean anyways, so I don't see the problem with this method.

What's interesting about these numbers though is what happens to Tom Horner's numbers when leaners are pushed, he goes from 18% to 9%. This is indicative of what is likely to happen to much of his support if he can't pull into actual competitiveness, but for half of his support to evaporate means it's mostly soft support right now.

If the dynamics remain as they are the key to this whole thing will be who can GOTV.

GPI update; SurveyUSA's Dem Downer Tour

SurveyUSA has shown some particularly bad numbers for Democrats this cycle and while their latest poll on the Minnesota governors race isn't bad news, it certainly isn't good. Here are the toplines:



There has been some significant movement towards Tom Emmer from the last SurveyUSA poll, both of which have been polls of likely voters, while Tom Horner has doubled his polling number. As I mentioned previously SurveyUSA has been Rasmussenesque in their election polling this year, often showing the Democratic candidate doing far worse then other pollsters, but they had been bucking that trend in Minnesota, until now that is.

GPI update, another weird Humphrey poll

With the release today of a new MPR/Humphrey poll I can once again update the GPI. Below is a list of the current polls included in the index followed by the current numbers.





Joe posted an excellent analysis of the Humphrey poll earlier today pointing out some of the issues with it. These are not the kinds of issues that disqualify a poll from being included in the index and is in fact the main reason for wanting to get a composite number from a combination of polls rather then relying on a single poll.

Having said all of that, partisan sampling problems do seem to be something of a trend for MPR/Humphrey institute polls. I posted this about their governor's race poll from May:

...the MPR/Humphrey Institute poll's sampling was 42% DFL, 42% GOP and 15% Independent. I honestly don't know where they got these numbers from, perhaps their rectum, but they certainly are not representative of Minnesota's partisan breakdown. First of all 15% is an incredibly low number for Independent's in Minnesota.

This polls breakdown is similar to the Humphrey poll from May in that the partisan breakdowns in both polls look nothing like the partisan breakdowns being used by anybody else who's polled this state. Now, maybe Humphrey knows something that all of the other pollsters don't, but judging by their 3.15 pollster rating, the sixth worst score of any pollster in Nate's database, my guess is that their polling suffers from a flaw in the methodology somewhere.

From MPR's article on the poll:

The survey data has also been weighted to accomodate for factors such as the number of telephone lines, cell phone usage, gender, age, race and ethnicity to approximate the demographic characteristics of the state's population according to the Census.

There is no mention of weighting the partisan numbers, so they probably don't, which would explain why they ended up with the split they did and probably also explains why they have such a poor track record.

Putting that aside, and as Joe pointed out, no matter how you slice it this is bad news for Tom Emmer. In a poll that consists of 46% republicans he could only manage to get the support of 34% of them. In what has to be considered a best case scenario for Tom Emmer he's only at parity with Mark Dayton. Don't let the media reports over the next few days fool you, this race is not "deadlocked" right now, Mark Dayton is clearly in the drivers seat.

Post Primary GPI update

With the release of the first post-primary poll of the Minnesota governor’s race I can update the now slimed down GPI, which is still using two pre-primary polls in its average.





I don’t want to read too much into a poll taken right after an election victory when Mark Dayton’s name has been in the news quite a bit, but the Rasmussen poll pretty much confirms what other pollsters have found, Mark Dayton has about a ten point lead on Tom Emmer.

Here are the toplines from the last two Rasmussen polls:

Dayton 45 (40)
Emmer 36 (36)

This falls in line with what the most recent polls have shown, Dayton at or above 40%, Emmer at or below 36% and Tom Horner right around 10%. This poll also has the lowest number of undecided voters of any poll done on the race so far, 10%.

It’s still early and there haven’t been any attack ads against Dayton yet, but they’re coming. If he can manage to ride it out and keep his numbers above 40% though, he’ll be tough to beat.

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:

GPI update

On Sunday the StarTribune released the numbers of their "Minnesota Poll." Here's what the Gubernatorial Polling Index looks like with the addition of that poll:



All of the DFLers now lead Tom Emmer whose campaign is crashing and burning before our very eyes. But that's not what is of primary interest right now (did you catch that sweet pun!). The DFL primary is next Tuesday and this is the first poll on that race in over a month.

Here's what the DFL primary looks like with the addition of the StarTribune poll:



Because the only other poll currently in the primary GPI, besides the StarTribune poll, is an almost 50 day old SurveyUSA poll, the numbers will look very similar to those of the Strib poll.

So what does the Strib poll tell us? It tells us that the race is in virtually the same place it was back in May. If you don't include the Mellman poll, Mark Dayton and Margaret Anderson Kelliher's numbers have been virtually identical in the three polls of the race so far and while Matt Entenza showed movement in the SurveyUSA poll that movement needed to continue for him to be competitive and it hasn't.

Again, not including the Mellman poll there hasn't been any poll released to date that's shown MAK within single digits of Dayton. This is a very important point. A good ground campaign can certainly be worth a few points, but 10 points seems like a stretch.

There has been some criticism of the primary part of this poll, mainly from the MAK and Entenza campaigns. The high margin of error is certainly something to be aware of, but it doesn't render the poll useless. Primary election polling is a more challenging endeavor than general election polling because it's anyone's guess what the primary electorate will look like. It's made more difficult this year because DFLers are not used to voting in early August. So no one really knows who will show up on Election Day.

But the idea that turnout this year will be greatly depressed because of the change of date is a bit of a reach, especially when comparing it to DFL turnout the last few cycles in which there wasn't really a contested primary. I don't want to go into too much detail because I have a post on exactly this subject I'm working on for later in the week, but if any of the campaigns are counting on depressed turnout to carry the day they will be in trouble.

The fact that Mark Dayton hasn't had less than a 10 point lead in any poll combined with his popularity among seniors, the most dependable group in mid-term elections, makes it a very difficult road for either of the other two candidates to pull out a victory.

New Ras poll, GPI update

It's been awhile since the Minnesota Governors race was polled, SurveyUSA released the last poll on the race over a month ago, so we haven't been able to update the GPI recently. Before we get to that let's just take a quick look at the results of the Rasmussen poll.



All three DFL candidates polled better this time than last time Rasmussen polled this race, by margins of 3 to 5 points while Emmer and Horner polled slightly worse, by margins of 1 to 2 points. These are the same trend lines that SurveyUSA caught in their now month old poll, Emmer slipping and the three DFL candidates gaining. It's not hard to see how these trends will only be magnified after the DFL primary in August.

Now onto the GPI update. Just a reminder on the methodology:

The weighted average is an average of all the polls, weighted against a variable called "weight". This variable represents a combination of the Pollster Rating and the age of the poll. The newer the poll and better the pollster the higher it will be weighted. The age of the poll has more effect on the weight then the pollster rating, with the age making up 75% of the weight and the Pollster Rating making up 25%. However the age weighting will essentially fall off at 50 days and this will get adjusted as we get closer to the race in question.

There are only two polls that meet the 50 day shelf life criteria right now, the just released Rasmussen poll and the June SurveyUSA poll, so the GPI is simply a weighted average of the two polls. The only recent poll on the DFL primary is the SuveyUSA poll, so there will be no update to the primary GPI right now.

Here's the current GPI poll list:



And now the actual GPI:



All of the DFL candidates increased their wAve by about 3 points while Emmer held steady and Horner dropped a couple. The trend lines certainly look good for the DFL going forward.

New Gov Poll, Entenza on the move

SurveyUSA is out with a new poll on the Minnesota Governor's race today that should put to rest any doubts about Matt Entenza's viability in the DFL primary. Here's the breakdown:

That's some serious movement for Entenza, going from 6 and 10 points in the last two polls to 22 in this one. The toplines of this poll match up pretty well to the more than one month old MPR/Humphrey poll for both Mark Dayton and Margaret Anderson Kelliher, and if you add Entenza's topline to the undecided number in both polls the result is very similar, meaning it appears a lot of Entenza's movement is coming from undecideds. The problem now for both Entenza and Kelliher is that there are not enough undecided's left to put either of them on top of Dayton. What this means is you can expect the attack ads to start coming because the only way Entenza or Kelliher can win is to bring down Dayton's numbers.

Here's the updated G.P.I. for the DFL primary (I have reduced the Pollster weighting for the Mellman poll to 0 since it is an internal poll, the age weighting remains).

A few notes about the crosstabs, it appears as though Matt Entenza's selection of Robyn Robinson as his running mate has given him inroads into the African-American community as seen in the racial breakdown:

All of that support among the African-American community is only worth 1 topline point for both Kelliher and Entenza however.

Now take a look at the regional breakdown:

MAK is going to have a hard time winning the DFL primary if she can't win in the metro area as Dayton does really well in rural Minnesota.

They also polled the general election (previous results in parenthesis):

As you can see Tom Emmer is in big trouble come general election time, he lost ground to all of the DFL candidates and the IP candidate. His position will only become more precarious as voters learn more about him. Here's the updated GPI for the overall race:

I've zeroed out the weight for the first SurveyUSA poll because I only want to use the most recent poll from a particular pollster in the wAve. As you can see the weighted average method is not affected as much by a single poll (the decision resources poll in particular) as the L3 method, so it should be more robust as a forecasting tool.