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.

Dayton's deal

There has been a great deal of teeth gnashing among some Democrats and progressives over the deal Governor Dayton struck with the GOP to end the shutdown. So for anyone who thinks Dayton capitulated, let's brake the deal down to it's essential elements:

Mark Dayton gave up an income tax increase on top earners and in return he got everything else he wanted; his $35+ billion budget, none of the GOPs crazy policy bills including cutting 15% of the state workforce and even his long forgotten bonding bill.

The GOP got to not raise taxes on the wealthy and they gave up everything else; their grab bag of extreme social policy provisions, their demand not to spend more than $34 billion, their desire to cut an arbitrary percentage of state workers for no good reason and they even agreed to go along with Dayton's bonding bill.

Still not convinced? How about this; Mark Dayton will get most of the credit from the public for ending the shutdown.

So tell me again, who won?

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%)

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.

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.