The Enthusiasm Gap is back

It's back! The dreaded juggernaut that toppled Democratic legislative majorities all over the country in 2010, the Enthusiasm Gap, has again reared it's head, huffing and snorting for more politicians blood.

Only this time, the Enthusiasm Gap appears to have switched sides and will now be trampling over GOPers.

PPP (3/26):

"Are you very excited, somewhat excited, or not at all excited about voting in the 2012 elections?"

Democrats
Very excited 57
Somewhat excited 28
Not at all excited 15

Republicans
Very excited 46
Somewhat excited 30
Not at all excited 24
(MoE: ±3.1%)

57% very excited Democrats and 46% very excited Republicans is a gap of 11 points. On March 28th 2011, almost exactly one year before this poll was taken, the Democrats numbers were about the same, 55% very excited. The big difference is that last year 56% of Republicans were very excited as well.

This graph helps to illustrate my point:

A-Klo, Dayton and the terrible, rotten, no-good Legislature

This is me, two weeks ago:

Posts about Amy Klobuchar polls are not really that fun to write. Every one is exactly the same, Amy is at around 55% and when you're at 55% it doesn't really matter what your challengers are doing.

And hey, look at that, this poll shows her at 55%. Against everyone. Again. For the third time. Call me shocked.

And ten weeks before that:

I might as well just write up a template for all these A-Klo poll posts, because they've all been the same so far. Amy Klobuchar is polling well over 50% against her announced opponents and is polling at 50% against the MN GOP's A-team, who can't even crack 40% against her.

And today:

SurveyUSA (2/3, 11/8 in parenthesis):

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 56 (55)
Dan Severson (R) 29 (23)
Undecided 15 (22)

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 59 (56)
Joe Arwood (R) 28 (22)
Undecided 14 (22)
(MoE: ±4.3%)

The real notable thing about this poll is that some of the undecideds have come off the fence and almost all of them went into the Republican candidates column, both Severson and Arwood are up 6 points since the last SUSA poll.

While that may seem like a bit of a worrying trend, it's not. It's was simply undecided Republicans, deciding to go with the Republican, which was going to happen anyway.

Three Minnesota Constitutional Amendment Polls

Back on February 3rd SurveyUSA, polling for KSTP, released a poll and I completely missed it for six days. So now, like a magazine that's been in the bathroom for a week, the corners bent and it's content exhausted, I'll finally bring it out for inspection.

The folks at SUSA asked about one constitutional amendment that's already on the ballot and two that seem like they're destined for that same fate.

SurveyUSA (2/3, 11/8 in parenthesis, 5/25 in brackets):

"An amendment to the Minnesota Constitution on the ballot defines marriage as between one man and one woman, will you vote..."

For	47	(46)	[51]
Against	39	(40)	[40]
Not vote	10	(10)	[8]
Not sure	4	(4)	[2]

(MoE: ±4.3%)

This issue has essentially stabilized over the last six months, with amendment supporters holding a small but consistent ~4 point advantage in the average of polls. SurveyUSA though is the only pollster who has given respondants the option of not voting for the amendment and they find 10% who utilize this option.

Those not votes, by people who cast a ballot, will count the same as no votes so it's tempting to simply lump them together and say that the amendment is actually losing slightly 49-47.

A-Klo still crushing

Posts about Amy Klobuchar polls are not really that fun to write. Every one is exactly the same, Amy is at around 55% and when you're at 55% it doesn't really matter what your challengers are doing.

And hey, look at that, this poll shows her at 55%. Against everyone. Again. For the third time. Call me shocked.

For the sake of completeness though, here it is:

PPP (1/23, 6/2 in parenthesis, 12/7 in brackets):

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 54 (54) [53]
Tim Pawlenty (R) 39 (41) [43]
Undecided 7 (5) [4]

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 58 (57) [56]
Michele Bachmann (R) 35 (37) [39]
Undecided 7 (5) [4]

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 55 (56)
Dan Severson (R) 32 (28)
Undecided 13 (16)

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 55
Joe Arwood (R) 30
Undecided 15

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 55
Anthony Hernandez (R) 29
Undecided 16
(MoE: ±2.9%)

You can see that their respective presidential runs haven't really helped the two Minnesota Republican heavyweights, Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann. The trend lines only show incremental change though, not significant erosion. That's due to both of them already being at or close to the "Kennedy line."

(Ed: The term "Kennedy Line" refers to the share of the vote that Mark Kennedy got in the 2006 Senate race, the Kennedy line is essentially the GOP's floor)

There's nothing about any poll of this race that's been done over that last year plus that has shown any real deviation from these numbers. And there's no silver lining for any of the GOP candidates when you delve into the crosstabs, 59% of Independents approve of Amy Klobuchar and even 32% of Republicans do.

She has what you call "Cross-over appeal," and she's worked very hard to cultivate that appeal. And these are the dividends that pays.

Yet another poll on the anti-family amendment

Around this time each year St. Cloud State University does a statewide poll and this years version featured a question about the anti-family amendment.

SCSU (11/12, no trend lines):

"Should the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one
woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?"

Yes 44
No 47
Don't know/refused 9
(MoE: ±5%)

This result runs contrary to the two polls from last week, by the Star Tribune (PSRA) and KSTP (SurveyUSA), who both found outside the margin of error leads for the amendment. And other than a PPP poll at the end of May that showed the amendment losing by a single point this is the only poll with the "one man, one woman" language to show the amendment losing outright.

If we simply average the three latest polls we get this; 43% do not support the amendment and 46% do. This leaves 10-11% in the undecided/don't know category. It's that 10% who will decide the fate of the amendment.

A-Klo cruising

In addition to testing the anti-family amendment and the Vikings stadium SurveyUSA also tested the 2012 Senate race and to absolutely no one's surprise Amy Klobuchar has wide leads over her announced opposition, Dan/Doc Severson and first term city councilman Joe Arwood.

SurveyUSA (11/8, no trendlines):

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 49
Tim Pawlenty (R) 37
Undecided 14

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 50
Norm Coleman (R) 37
Undecided 14

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 55
Dan Severson (R) 23
Undecided 22

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 56
Joe Arwood (R) 22
Undecided 22
(MoE: ±4.3%)

I might as well just write up a template for all these A-Klo poll posts, because they've all been the same so far. Amy Klobuchar is polling well over 50% against her announced opponents and is polling at 50% against the MN GOP's A-team, who can't even crack 40% against her.

You can see why she does so well by looking at the cross-tabs, she loses at most 7% of Democrats, while taking 17% of Republicans against the known names and 28% against the unknowns. And there is simply nothing in any of these numbers that indicate any vulnerability for the GOP to exploit.

The only real question I have about this race is weather A-Klo can actually do better than the 58% she got in 2006.

Another poll shows the anti-family amendment winning

On Tuesday I posted about the Minnesota Poll and it's findings vis-a-vie the anti-family amendment, which were discouraging to say the least. Right on the heels of that comes a SurveyUSA poll showing basically the same result, Minnesota voters favoring the amendment by a handful of points.

SurveyUSA (11/8, 5/25 in parenthesis, 3/31 in brackets):

"If an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution were on the ballot, that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, would you vote..."

For	46	(51)	[62]
Against	40	(40)	[33]
Not vote	10	(8)
Not sure	4	(2)	[5]

(MoE: ±4.3%)

This somewhat mirror's the Strib's 48-43 result in favor of the amendment. The big difference though is that SurveyUSA gave people the "not vote" option, of which 10% availed themselves.

If people actually voted this way next November the amendment would fail. This is because for an amendment to the Minnesota constitution to pass it needs to receive 50% + 1 of the entire electorate. Meaning not voting on the measure is as good as voting no.

The other thing you can see is that actual support for the amendment has eroded quite a bit since SurveyUSA's first poll of the issue at the end of March, going from 62% support, to 51% to 46% now. Opposition to the amendment hasn't risen at the same level as support has fallen, meaning that many people who at first supported the amendment have moved into the "Not vote" and "Not sure" categories.

Like in the Minnesota poll though, there are a substantial number of Democrats, 26% in this case, who are in favor of the amendment while only 58% are opposed. This will simply not do if we want to beat this thing.

About that State Fair poll

Yesterday, The Big E went over the results of the State Fair poll on the Anti-Family Amendment as it pertains to the task ahead.

Today, I will use the same poll to point out the uncertain nature of the outcome of that task and why organizing will be the key to winning.

First, though, the results of the poll, conducted by the Minnesota House of Representatives, one more time.

"Should the state constitution be amended to define marriage as "only a union of one man and one woman?" This question will be on the November 2012 ballot."

Yes 29.8%
No 66.5%
Undecided 3.7%

What you see is that unlike with normal polls, this poll has no margin of error (but it has insignificant digits!). That's because it's actually not a poll at all, it's a straw poll.

There are two key differentiating factors between the State Fair poll and a poll from, say, Gallup; the nature of the sample and weighting.

At the State Fair anybody can just walk up and take the poll. In a traditional survey every effort is made to get as random a sample as possible. And by random I mean everyone who makes up the sample frame should theoretically have as equal a chance of being a respondent as anyone else.

Additionally, even though you go to every effort to get as random a sample as possible, the final result is often a little different from the actual demographics of the sample frame. To alleviate this, pollsters will weight their samples based on immutable characteristics like age, gender and race. The State Fair poll doesn't do any of these things.

So, the State Fair (straw) poll violates two of the most fundamental aspects of traditional public opinion polling, but just because it's a completely unscientific survey doesn't mean we can't do a little bit of analysis right?

MinnPost gets into the polling game

Citing a lack of other news organizations polling about the state of opinion in Minnesota in the post-shutdown environment MinnPost decided to run with that ball and commissioned themselves a poll.

MinnPost (7/28, all Minnesotans):

Who do you think is most responsible for the budget crisis and shutdown?

Governor Dayton: 21
Republicans in the Legislature: 42
Both (volunteered): 22
No opinion: 15
(MoE: ±4.8%)

There's not really much to parse in these results, 64% of respondents blame the GOP while 43% blame Governor Dayton, supporting the impression I had that the public was siding with Dayton.

WI-Recall: Two Dems leading, a third close

DailyKos sent PPP out to Wisconsin again to have a look at the upcoming state Senate recall elections, here's what they came back with:

PPP (6/28 likely voters, 3/14 in parenthesis*)

Senate district 32
Jennifer Shilling (D): 55 (55)
Dan Kapanke (R-Inc): 42 (41)

Senate district 18
Jessica King (D): 50 (49)
Randy Hopper (R-Inc): 47 (44)

Senate district 10
Sheila Harsdorf (R-Inc): 50 (48)
Shelly Moore (D): 45 (44)

* the 3/14 poll pitted the GOP incumbents against generic democrats

There has been remarkably little movement in these races since the first poll that PPP did on them back in mid-march. I say remarkably because in the earlier poll PPP didn't even know who the Republicans were going to be facing and so polled them against a generic democratic opponent.

There is good news in this poll and there is bad news; the good news, Dan Kapanke is toast and Jessica King is up by a small amount on Randy Hopper. The bad news, Sheila Harsdorf continues to have a small but significant lead.

WI-Recall: Two Dems leading, a third close

DailyKos sent PPP out to Wisconsin again to have a look at the upcoming state Senate recall elections, here's what they came back with:

PPP (6/28 likely voters, 3/14 in parenthesis*)

Senate district 32
Jennifer Shilling (D): 55 (55)
Dan Kapanke (R-Inc): 42 (41)

Senate district 18
Jessica King (D): 50 (49)
Randy Hopper (R-Inc): 47 (44)

Senate district 10
Sheila Harsdorf (R-Inc): 50 (48)
Shelly Moore (D): 45 (44)

* the 3/14 poll pitted the GOP incumbents against generic democrats

There has been remarkably little movement in these races since the first poll that PPP did on them back in mid-march. I say remarkably because in the earlier poll PPP didn't even know who the Republicans were going to be facing and so polled them against a generic democratic opponent.

There is good news in this poll and there is bad news; the good news, Dan Kapanke is toast and Jessica King is up by a small amount on Randy Hopper. The bad news, Sheila Harsdorf continues to have a small but significant lead.

KSTP poll: It's all in the question

That pretty much sums up my feelings about this poll. Only I might add a WTF, or something similar, but I'm a bit more uncouth than Aaron is.

KSTP, as they are wont to do, asked a couple different questions about the budget, but none of them really got to the point; who's budget do you favor the Governor's or the GOP Legislature's.

Not only that, they asked completely different questions from the survey that they did at the end of May, only one month ago, meaning we can't even really compare the two surveys.

SurveyUSA (6/20, no trendlines):

Going forward, should Minnesota's government increase spending? Decrease spending? Or continue to spend about the same amount as it has been?

Increase 8
Decrease 60
About The Same 27
Not Sure 5
(MoE: ±4.1%)

Pawlenty Polling Roundup

The last time I posted something about Tim Pawlenty, it was to look at the disconnect between how he was polling and how he was being talked up by the media. That was back in March.

Not much had really changed since then, the pundits were still treating him like a front runner and the polls still disagreed. But in the past week or so he has officially announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination for President and for the first time he's posted some decent polling numbers. Since I haven't covered any of these polls yet, I'm going to throw them all into one big Pawlenty polls post.

Are you ready for the T-Pawmentum?

PPP (6/2, GOP primary voters, 5/10 in parenthesis):

Mitt Romney: 16 (18)
Sarah Palin: 16 (12)
Tim Pawlenty: 13 (5)
Herman Cain: 12
Michele Bachmann: 9 (7)
Ron Paul: 9 (8)
Newt Gingrich: 9 (13)
Jon Huntsman: 4
Someone else/Undecided: 12 (11)
(MoE: ±4.1%)

A-Klo crushes

No real analysis needed here, simply put, unless Amy Klobuchar gets caught sending a tweet of little Amy to a high school kid, she's a virtual lock for re-election.

PPP (6/2, 12/7 in parenthesis):

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 54 (53)
Tim Pawlenty (R) 41 (43)
Undecided 5 (4)

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 57 (56)
Michele Bachmann (R) 37 (39)
Undecided 5 (4)

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 57
Chris Barden (R) 30
Undecided 13

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 56
Dan Severson (R) 28
Undecided 16

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 55
Dave Thompson (R) 28
Undecided 17
(MoE: ±2.9%)

Unpacking the rest of the PPP poll

Yesterday I went over the questions in the recent PPP poll concerning the Marriage Discrimination Amendment, today I'm going to look at the numbers on Governor Dayton and the Legislature.

PPP (6/1, no trendlines):

"Do you approve or disapprove of Governor Mark Dayton’s job performance?"

Approve 51
Disapprove 38
Not sure 10
(MoE: ±2.9%)

As Tom Jensen points out in his analysis of the polling info:

The buyer's remorse about the results of last year's Gubernatorial elections that we've found in midwestern states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania appears to be a Republican only phenomenon. Mark Dayton has a very solid 51/38 approval rating with more GOP voters (12%) happy with the job he's doing than Democrats (6%) who are unhappy. Independents think he's doing a good job by a 48/39 spread as well.

John Kasich in Ohio (33/56), Rick Snyder in Michigan (33/50), Terry Branstad in Iowa (41/45) and Scott Walker in Wisconsin (43/54) all have underwater approval spreads according to PPP's results. Yet Mark Dayton, dealing with a larger budget deficit issue than any of the aforementioned Governor's is comfortably in positive territory.

PPP splits the difference

This is the third poll in the last three weeks that has asked Minnesotan's about the Marriage Discrimination Amendment. The first, the StarTribune's Minnesota Poll, showed Minnesotan's opposed to the amendment 55-39, the second, from SurveyUSA, showed Minnesotan's in favor 51-40 (51-48 if the "not vote on the measure" group is applied to the oppose column).

If you do some simple math and average those results you get 47.5% opposed to the amendment and 45% in favor, which is almost exactly the results that PPP got in their new poll.

PPP (6/1, no trendlines):

"Should the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?"

Yes 46
No 47
Not sure 7
(MoE: ±2.9%)

So even though these three polls are all over the map, there is some consistency in their inconsistency.

The Minnesota Poll throws everything at the wall, some it of sticks

The StarTribune spent last week and weekend doing a slow release of information from their Minnesota Poll, with some of the numbers providing a bit of a surprise. Let's dive right in starting in chronological order of when the Strib released the individual numbers.

StarTribune (PSRA) (5/9, no trend lines):

"Do you think Native American tribes should continue to have exclusive rights to operate casino gambling facilities in Minnesota, or do you think gambling should be opened up to others?"

Should be opened up to others 72
Tribes should have exclusive rights 23
Don't know/refused 5

"If the gambling is expanded, which one of the following would you most prefer? The choices are:"

Allowing video slot machines at Canterbury Park and Running Aces racetracks 20
A casino in downtown Minneapolis 12
A casino at the mall of America 8
Allowing video slot machines in bars and restaurants 8
Would you prefer to see gambling expanded in all of these areas? 37
None/oppose all (volunteered) 11
Don't know/refused 4
(MoE: ±4.7%)

The fact that 72% of respondents don't like the tribal exclusive on gambling might be the least surprising result of the entire poll. There is some genuine opposition to gambling expansion, but not all of that opposition is from the tribal rights point of view so when the expansion question is framed this way it's not surprising to see results like this.

The follow-up though confirms that there is not insignificant support for an overall expansion of gambling, a plurality, 37% want to see gambling opened up in all areas. You can probably think of the Downtown Casino and Mall of America Casino answers as supporting essentially the same idea, so that group is about 20% and another 20% for the Racino's.

Feel free to add the 37% who support all forms of gambling expansion to both the Twin Cities Casino or the Racino's support numbers to come up with well over 50% in favor of both proposals with only 11% firmly against any expansion.

This should be a no-brainer for the legislature, but considering the blow-up happening in the GOP over gambling right now, who knows what will come of it.

Wisconsin Senate Recall Polls

DailyKos commissioned their polling partner, PPP, to poll the eight potential recall elections in Wisconsin. In all eight of the polls they matched the incumbant Republican with a "generic Democrat," so the number to pay attention to is the incumbents re-elect number.

PPP (3/14, no trend lines):

Dan Kapanke (R): 41
Generic Dem: 55

Randy Hopper (R): 44
Generic Dem: 49

Luther Olsen (R): 47
Generic Dem: 49

Rob Cowles (R): 45
Generic Dem: 43

Sheila Harsdorf (R): 48
Generic Dem: 44

Alberta Darling (R): 52
Generic Dem: 44

Mary Lazich (R): 56
Generic Dem: 34

Glenn Grothman (R): 60
Generic Dem: 32

No information yet on sample size and margin of error which will be posted tomorrow morning at DailyKos

Wisconsin Democrats need to win three of these seats to take back control of the Senate and what do you know, there are three incumbents trailing against a generic Democrat. Additionally two more incumbents are below 50% against a generic Democrat.

Before a recall election can happen though, Wisconsin Democrats have to collect the requisite number of signatures. In that regard things are looking good, as Chris Bowers at DailyKos posted about earlier today, with over three quarters of the time remaining Democrats claim to have almost 50% of the required signatures.

Of course the first 50% is easier than the second 50% and what's more Wisconsin Democrats will surely want to collect more than the bare minimum of signatures to guard against the inevitable legal challenges.

All of which means if you can donate any money or time to help your cheese-head neighbors next door, now's the time.

Bachmann leads field of non-contenders

PPP polled Republican Primary voters about their preferences for who should run for the Senate against Amy Klobuchar, not surprisingly Michele Bachmann leads the field, a field with very few possible challengers.

Public Policy Polling (12/10 Republican Primary voters, no trend lines):

Michele Bachmann (R): 36
Tim Pawlenty: 20
Norm Coleman: 14
Chip Craavack: 7
Tom Emmer: 6
John Kline: 5
Laura Brod: 4
Eric Paulson: 2
Some else/not sure: 6
(MoE: ±5%)

First poll of 2012 Senate race; Nothing to see here

PPP polled the 2012 Minnesota Senate race and found Amy Klobuchar leading the five GOPers they tested her against and garnering over 50% of the vote against them all. Long story short, Amy Klobuchar will be very difficult to beat in 2012.

Here's the breakdown of the match-ups.

PPP (12/7, no trend lines):

Amy Klobuchar (D): 56
Michele Bachmann (R): 39
Undecided: 4

Amy Klobuchar (D): 54
Norm Coleman (R): 40
Undecided: 6

Amy Klobuchar (D): 56
Tom Emmer (R): 38
Undecided: 6

Amy Klobuchar (D): 53
Tim Pawlenty (R): 43
Undecided: 4

Amy Klobuchar (D): 52
Eric Paulson (R): 34
Undecided: 14
(MoE: ±3.2%)