I’m just a simple taxpayer; house in the Midway, two kids, a job. I don’t talk big like my Yale-graduate betters. I am just a peasant.
And so when my would-be leader says “I have a plan”, I guess like the knavish dolt I am I assumed that to mean “He has a plan”, rather than “He shall reveal The Plan when it, in its majesty, is ready for us to see it”.
Do you have a plan, or don’t you?
And if you do, how does it make up $890 million (actually more like $1.315 billion) without soaking the middle class?
…I believe the DFL, and the Dems nationwide, are going to hold on this cycle. I believe that if the GOP gains a single net seat pickup, in either chamber, either in Saint Paul or Washington, it’ll be a huge defeat for the Dems at either level.
Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer is all over the new Republican theme — Democratic candidate Mark Dayton doesn’t have a complete budget plan.
Emmer hammered the point, made by supportive Republicans repeatedly during the past few days, on a Tuesday spot on Minnesota Public Radio.
“Let’s start talking about the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge. Sen. Dayton has proposed a plan that is billions of dollars short,” Emmer said. He went on to suggest that Dayton will have to increase taxes more folks than he’s specified — couples making taxable income of $150,000 and singles earning $130,000. “How far are you willing to go?”
Let’s extend that thought for a moment: Mark Dayton is not a dumb guy. And he’s got people on his campaign staff who are even smarter. They don’t own a supercomputer – but they don’t need one to put together the broad outlines of a budget. Their campaign isn’t short of staff or funding, obviously.
So if you think the only budget that the Dayton campaign has is the one that’s on the website – the one that grins a big dumb grin and says “we’re $890 million short” with the same seriousness of a junior high kid saying the dog ate his homework – then I have to say with all due respect that you’re beggaring reason. Either the campaign is incompetent, or they know where that extra $890 million is coming from, and would rather the electorate not know.
And if you assume Democrats and Dayton aren’t just plain stupid, that leaves you with only “b”
“Put it on paper, Sen. Dayton,” Emmer said. (Republicans on Twitter and on blogs have taken to accusing individual reporters of negligence for not following suit.)
Stassen-Berger links to my Twitter account, as well as my “AWOL Media” piece yesterday. I wouldn’t use the phrase “accusing of negligence”, really – it’s got a legalistic tinge to it that’s a little unseemly for free speech.
It just seems that the media, which six weeks ago were hot to get all the details of the Emmer budget, has suddenly gotten incredibly incurious. And yet now that Dayton’s budget has a large, suspicious hole – and there really is no solution but to jack up taxes on the middle class – suddenly it seems that the people don’t have a “right to know”, accorinding to our regional political media.
I mean, did you see Esme Murphy?
She might as well have been giving the Senator a massage. “Do you have any plans?” Er, nope. And it ended there!
Did you hear Keri Miller’s interview with Tom Emmer? Back before Emmer released his budget? She went after him like a barracuda after Charlie the Tuna.
Does the public – especially us middle-class schnook taxpayers – still have a right to know now that it’s the favorite son of Minnesota’s political “elite?”
I mean…:
Dayton has acknowledged that his budget plan comes up nearly $1 billion short. That’s in part because his income tax plan won’t bring in as much money as he had hoped. He has specified how he would make the cuts he’s found, although some are estimates and others have been deemedunrealistic. But he admits a “gap,” which leads opponents to believe he’ll raise more in taxes.
…I’m a complete schlemiel as a “reporter”, and even I see that these are some huge, valid questions!
So David Brauer – who’s never covered up his lefty sympathies, but seems to try to do a decent job anyway – asked via Twitter:
He links to a this Rachel Stassen-Berger story in the Strib, and a Doug Grow piece in the MinnPost. Stassen-Berger did, indeed, note that Dayton’s budget comes up short – but there’s no evidence that I’ve seen (I’m willing to be corrected!) that she’s gotten up at a Dayton presser and said “OK, Chauncey Fauntelroy, if you don’t have to hit the middle class, who do you have to get the $890 million? We’ve got all day, Yale boy” (Those might be my words rather than Stassen-Berger’s).
Grow makes the valid point that…:
…no governor, no matter how popular, will be able to zip a budget package through the Legislature without major changes. In this case, whoever is governor likely will not be elected with a majority of the vote, meaning there will be little chance to claim any mandate, so you can expect nasty legislative fights.
…while basically claiming a pox on all their fiscal houses.
And, most importantly, both of these pieces were two weeks ago. Juuuuust about the time that the non-wonk class – all those actual voters – started thinking about the election.
@mitchpberg Fair question. Would venture Dayton’s gap is well-known, covered and acknowledged. For many weeks, Emmer seemed to be ducking.
Well-known to whom? Political reporters and political junkies and fire-breathing political bloggers? Sure!
The average voter – especially the ones who start paying attention to politics sometime between the first and fifteenth of October?
Hell – I’ve talked with candidates for the State House who haven’t read anything about this yet.
So while I’m not going to say that our assembled mass of journalists are “negligent” for not asking, I’m still curious; when the public has a right to know, does it imply they’re supposed to exercise that right by developing a jones for research?
Look, journos; if your line is “all three of the candidates’ budgets leave questions”, then ask them. That’s what you get the big bucks for. Hell, I’d do it, if any of them (but Emmer) returned my calls! And since neither of them do, I – and, more importantly, we, the entire body politic – have to depend on y’all, Tim Pugmire and Tom Scheck and Bill Salisbury and Rachel Stassen-Berger and Pat Kessler to do it.
Thing is, so far in the race, it’s Emmer that’s been getting the questioning; Dayton seems to be the only one who can get away with saying “I’ll get back to you on November 3”.
Am I wrong?
What say you, Tim and Rachel and Tom and Bill and Pat?
Joe Doakes from Como writes about the latest round of presidential/vice-presidential campaign junketeering:
What would you say is the most liberal place in Wisconsin? UW-Madison?
How about Iowa? Drake University?
What would you say is the most liberal place in the Twin Cities? Macalester?
Where did the President go last month, and Vice-President today, just four weeks before the election, in prime campaign time?
Why those tiny oases of liberalism rather than larger middle-of-the-road locations? Why spend the entire day on the campaign for Governor of a fly-over state, and not stumping for Congressional candidates in close races around the country?
No other Democrat wants to be anywhere near them.
Desperation.
And fear.
No, not just the “ooooh, you conservatives are motivated by fear!” BS Dems throw out as a substitute for intelligent argument.
It’s the fear that their base is eroding. A confident movement strikes out into territory it hasn’t conquered before – like Reagan into the Rust Belt, or Obama into the suburbs, or like Chip Cravaack into the hinterlands of the Iron Range.
A movement on the defensive hides out in places like UW/Madison and Macalester and tries to keep the less koolaid-sotted droogs from sitting the election completely out.
Over the past five weeks, Tom Emmer has released a budget plan that balances the budget, and lays the groundwork for the kind of economic growth that actually sets economies up for the kind of long-term prosperity that makes budget fiascoes like the past four years dim, comic memories.
In the meantime, Mark Dayton’s first budget cratered – came up $3 Billion short – and his second attempt is well over a billion off the mark, and Dayton is now saying budgets don’t really matter that much anyway until he’s elected.
So I’m wondering – where are the media who were so strident about having a budget to fact-check last summer?
Rachel Stassen-Berger? Tim Pugmire? Tom Scheck? Pat Kessler? Bill Salisbury? Eric Black? David Brauer?
Where are all the great journalistic instincts of one of the nation’s putatively top-twenty media markets?
Or don’t the people have a right to know anymore?
Let’s start counting up days until someone in the regional mainstream media – MPR, the Strib, the PiPress, WCCO-TV, anyone covers the vaporous vacuity of the Dayton “budget plan”.
According to the DFL and their buildup of minimum wage leftyblog minions, the fact that Tom Emmer hadn’t released a detailed budget plan was a finger in the eye of The People. They had a right to knoooooooooow!, after all. And they had to knooooooooooow it right then and there, dagnabbit!
Then Emmer released a budget plan – one that balanced the budget without raising taxes, lowered taxes on job-creating activities, and left K12 education untouched.
And then it turned out that Mark Dayton’s first attempt at a budget plan fell three billion dollars short on balancing the budget.
And then his second attempt fell 890 million dollars short (or maybe more!).
And now, suddenly, having a budget plan in place just isn’t that big a deal!
He even said on WCCO on Sunday morning, amid Esme Murphy painting his toenails…
Can you imagine what Esme Murphy would have done had Tom Emmer ever called his plan a “work in progress?”
Now, Mark Dayton’s a smart guy. And he’s got a lot of smart people working for him. And while they don’t have access to a “supercomputer” to figure out budget numbers, they don’t need one. A fairly complex Excel spreadsheet will get you the big-picture numbers; some not-cheap software (certianly avaiable to the compaign) can work out the fine details. Just like Emmer did.
And yet they didn’t.
Wait. Do you really believe that, after two go-arounds, that the Dayton camp doesn’t have a budget?
Rubbish.
They do. They just don’t want you to see it.
Because the real Dayton Budget Plan – the one they don’t want you to see yet – socks it to the Middle Class. There is no other way. To think that Dayton doesn’t know this beggars credulity. To think that there is any other politically-palatable answer is pollyannaish and just plain stupid.
There are huge questions to be asked about the nonexistant “Dayton Budget Plan”.
An internal poll shows Chip Cravaack – the GOP-endorsed candidate for Congress in the Eighth Congressional District, within three points in his race against 17-term Representative Jim Oberstar.
The poll – by Public Opinion Strategies – was of 300 likely voters in the Eighth District. It has a five point margin of error.
It shows the race at 45-42 Oberstar, with very few undecideds.
Even if Cravaack were to finish in November within twenty points against Oberstar – who has been winning races by 40-odd points in recent memory – it would have been a huge moral victory.
Even if it’s only partly true – that Cravaack is even close – that’s going to be a huge kick in the head for the DFL.
But it gets better: with messaging thrown in at the end of the poll – Cap and Trade (which will devastate mining in the range), regulation (which has kept a couple of big precious metals mining projects from starting digging) and Obamacare, the numbers switch to 47-41 Cravaack. And the “re-elect” number – “would you reelect Oberstar” – is 40%, versus 48 for “someone new”.
If this is true – if Cravaack upsets Oberstar in the Eighth, one of the most traditionally, reliably Democrat-voting districts there is outside of Berkeley, Manhattan and Minneapolis – then all bets are truly off in this election.
I’ll be following this very closely.
Because you can bet the mainstream media will not.
I went into a neighborhood store the other day. The guy behind the counter is someone I talk politics with on occasion; he knows I’m a Republican, he is too (we all know each other in Saint Paul), and knows that I do a talk show.
“So how bad is it?” he asked. “Emmer down by 12 points?”
I spent about twenty minutes talking him off the ledge, explaining all the methodological problems in the “Minnesota Poll” and the “Humphrey Institute” polls. By the time I left, he’d put the sharp objects back in their places.
But as I walked back to the car, I thought if you’re one of the DFL’s opinion-manipulation technicians, that’s gotta be music to your ears. Good Republicans losing heart in the month before an election that, by all rights, we should win and win big.
And all because of lies, and a couple of polls that, in a just world, would be called push polls, or just-plain propaganda.
So my mission is clear. Dispel the DFL’s and media’s (pardon the redundancy) lies, one at a time.
Common Cause Minnesota is a “non-profit, non-partisan” organization whose every initiative is, mirabile dictu, exactly in sync with the “progressive” wing of the Minnesota DFL.
No huge shock there.
Speech rationing – “campaign finance reform” – has long been one of their main initiatives. Read for yourself. They want – so they claim – transparency in politics.
Now, the law doesn’t require them to divulge exactly who their donors are – which is kind of a weaselly out for a group that wants government to limit and regulate your First Amendment right to political speech.
At any rate, yesterday they released word that they were going to file a complaint against a series of Minnesota political action committees (PACs) that were playing a shell game with third-party donations, trying to make accountability difficult.
And given how hard Common Cause has been proclaiming their ecumenicism and non-partisan mission, I thought “Halleluiah! They’re going to do something about the epic three-card monte game the Dayton campaign has going on!”
As we discussed last June, the Dayton campaign was being supported by a huge ad campaign from a group called “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”. At that time, ABM’s funding came from a bunch of unions, and a group called “Win Minnesota”, which was largely funded by…the Dayton family; as of last June, the list was…:
Andrew Dayton $1,000
David Dayton $50,000
John cowles $25,000 [former Strib publisher]
MaryLee Dayton $250,000
Emily Tuttle (MN) $5,000
Ronald Sternal (MN) $5,000
Alida Messinger (NY) $500,000
James Deal (MN) $50,000
Roger Hale (MN) $10,000 [Remember him from above?]
Barbara forster (MN) $25,000
Democratic Governors Association $250,000 [remember them; they’ll appear later in this story]
Win Minnesota also funded a group which at the time had no name, but which shared an address with Win Minnesota, which has since been named “The 2010 Fund”. 2010 of last June had about $850K in the bank, including money from:
Alida Messinger (Mpls) $50,000
Win Minnesota $50,000
Education MN $250,000
Laborers District Council $100,000
MAPE $50,000
IBEW MN State Council $50,000
MN Nurses Assc $50,000
Local 49 Engineers $25,000
Vance Opperman $50,000 [the “progressive” plutocrat former owner of Thomson/West publishing]
Afscme Council 5 $50,000
MN AFL-CIO $25,000
SEIU MN State Council $50,000
AFSCME (Wash DC) $50,000;
I’m looking for the updated numbers from all of these funds.
Common Cause Minnesota has uncovered a scheme by the Minnesota’s Future political committee and the Republican Governors Association (RGA) to avoid Minnesota’s original source disclosure law by funneling a $428,000 contribution from the RGA to Minnesota’s Future through a shell company. The company, Minnesota Future, LLC was created just days before it received the contribution from the RGA and immediately transferred the funds to the Minnesota’s Future political committee.
Today, three separate complaints were filed with the Minnesota Campaign Finance Disclosure Board against Minnesota’s Future, Minnesota Future, LLC, and the RGA. The complaints allege that the three groups together violated multiple state statutes ranging from circumvention of campaign finance laws, failing to register as a political committee, and failing to report receipts and expenditures. The three entities could face $5.1 million in civil penalties and criminal prosecution.
“This was a brazen attempt to circumvent Minnesota’s disclosure law,” said Mike Dean, Executive Director of Common Cause Minnesota. “The public has a right to know what special interests are behind political ads, especially during a hotly contested election.”
So the public has a “right to know” the money behind “Minnesota’s Future” from the Republican Governors Association…
…but the multiple millions of dollars from the Dayton Family, the unions, and the Democratic Governors Assocication which financed the most vile smear campaign in the history of Minnesota politics (under the cover of a phony grass-roots organization funded by the Dayton family!) isn’t something “the public” needs to know about?
I’ve invited a representative of Common Cause to come on the Northern Alliance tomorrow to discuss what would be brazen hypocrisy from a genuinely “non-partisan” organization.
One of the wacky things about the 750-voter, landline-only, five-day survey is how much partisan ID shifted in just a month. August’s poll was 46 percent GOP, 41 percent Democrat — the only major survey with a Republican plurality. This one is 48 percent Dem, 38 percent GOP.
Humphrey Institute Prof. Larry Jacobs ascribes this to renewed DFL enthusiasm.
At the risk of being accused of Pauline Kael syndrome – what DFL enthusiasm?
At the risk of being called a cynic, I’d say Jacobs has a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue here. The poll is here – again, this is an accused cynic talking – to boost that enthusiasm.
However, the dramatic shift will inflame the doubters, particularly GOP partisans, whose rightest wing generally regards the HHH poll as the junior member of a Strib-led pro-DFL Gruesome Twosome.
Well, that’s cutting it a bit finely. We can be more broad than that. The HHH, the Strib and MPR are all pr0-DFL – or at least pro-big-government – institutions. Whether by accident or design, their polling operations reflect their institutions’ biases and, at this point of the election.
This demands a little more discussion of how the poll determines likely voters, a topic I broached the other day.
Why yes. Yes, it does.
UPDATE: Look – the logical side of my brain says “these numbers, and those in the MNPoll, do not, no way, no how, pass the stench test”.
The not-so-logical, inductive side of my brain is the part filling in the rest. Which isn’t to say I don’t think there’s something to it.
Yesterday, I dubbed theStrib/”Minnesota” Poll “The DFL Morale Booster”. Not for the first time, of course.
David Brauer writing at the MinnPost responded, more or less:
So with the new Star Tribune poll out showing DFLer Mark Dayton with a 9-point lead over Republican Tom Emmer, it’s the right’s turn to howl over alleged bias.
I dunno that I was “howling”, per se, but if one can’t use hyperbole in the last month of a campaign, when can one? I’ll let it slide, while pointing out that I, and conservatives in general, have legitimate questions about the Minnesota Poll.
In the spirit of Dems accusing Rasmussen Reports of being a Republican house organ, Mitch Berg at the True North blog dubs the Strib results “The DFL morale-booster”:
I’ll remind you that if the Minnesota poll were accurate, we’d be referring to Governor Humphrey (the poll showed Moe with a strong lead over Coleman, with Ventura well out of the running), Senator Mondale (who had a five point lead in the MN Poll on the eve of the ’02 election), Governor Moe (to whom the MNPoll gave a slim lead, while significantly overpolling IP candidate Tim Penny in ’02), Governor Hatch (yep, slated to win in ’06)…
And he digs into some history, pointing out correctly that the Strib Poll changed pollsters in 2007, ditching Rob Daves, who presided over years of polling in which the Strib’s house poll was a laughingstock among those who paid attention.
And Brauer brings up a couple of valid points – points I never really disputed in my original piece. Polls aren’t generally intended to be “predictions”. And…
…missing the final margin doesn’t necessarily mean a pollster is wrong. Sentiment can swing in the voting booth, after polling ends. (This is why pollsters refer to their results as a “snapshot in time.”) Also, any poll has margin of sampling error. The trick is to see patterns — the so-called “house effect” toward a particular party, and whether results are consistent outliers.
Correct.
And as I noted in my post, the Strib during the Daves years was an extremely consistent outlier
Let’s begin with Daves’ last cycle, the 2006 election.
Mitch rakishly references “Gov. Hatch.” Here are the three major pollsters’ final November results, via Real Clear Politics’ roundups:
Brauer correctly notes that the Minnesota Poll put Hatch three points above Pawlenty; Rasmussen had him by two, and Survey USA called it a tie; none of the major polls showed Pawlenty winning. Pawlenty,k of course, won by one. Brauer also notes that Daves correctly predicted A-Klo’s blowout againt Mark Kennedy.
He then goes through the 2008 results, which was both the first cycle without Daves, and the first with Princeton Research doing the math.
…the Strib picked two winners, SUSA two (we’ll give ’em the TPaw tie) and Rasmussen only the AKlo blowout.
Even allowing for GOP mewling that Franken stole the 2008 election, it seems clear that the three polls have circled the final result roughly equally. I’d also note that, at least from 2006 on, if you’re comparing the final polls to the eventual outcome, SUSA’s house effect is as Republican as the Strib’s is Democratic.
2008 – and to some extent 2006 – are not the best years to analyze, really; except for the Pawlenty/Hatch and Franken/Coleman races, neither were especially suspenseful years, although the Minnesota Poll came out with a four or five point error in the DFL’s favor in both races. In short – and to be admittedly cynical – the DFL didn’t need a morale boost in either of those cycles. They won just about everything that mattered!
Brauer is correct that SUSA erred by the same margin in Coleman’s favor; I’d argue that at least some conventional wisdom would have backed that at the time, if not by five points. But I doubt you can say with a straight face that Survey USA has a generation-long history of GOP bias averaging seven points per Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate race.
Of course, Daves is out, and the Strib has Princeton, an ostensibly unbiased third party, doing the poll. And that’s where we get into the real meat of this MNPoll; how has the methodogy changed, and will it affect the MNPoll’s accuracy?
Whenever the Rasmussen and Humphrey Polls show the gubernatorial race well within the margin of error, the regional leftyblog buildup chants in unison “they only poll landlines”. The MNPoll ostensibly addresses that:
As I’ve noted in several columns this month, the Strib’s 2010 polling now include cellphone-only voters, a potentially significant methological difference with Rasmussen, SUSA, and the Humphrey Institute/MPR poll.
Perhaps – if you presume that people who don’t have land lines are primarily younger and DFL-leaning, that the Humphrety and Rasmussen’s efforts to correct for this phenomenon aren’t valid (both note in their breakouts that they attempted to weight for this)and that younger/DFL voters are especially more likely to vote in this cycle.
Brauer concludes:
A potentially bigger difference: how each pollster screens for likely general-election voters. I’m surveying the major pollsters on their “likely voter screens” and will let you know after I hear back from everyone.
That is, of course, a key question. I’ll watch for Brauer’s followup.
Equally important, at least as re the MNPoll, is how they broke out the numbers they did include in the poll: their sample of “likely voters” included 35% DFL, 28% Republican, 28% “Independent” (but not necessarily “Independence”), and 9% “other parties” or undecided.
Is the party ID gap, in this year of the Tea Party, with the most motivated conservative base in a generation, really still 25% in favor of the DFL in Minnesota?
Are “independents” really going to break predominantly for Dayton, in this anti-big-government year? In the Metro, perhaps – but statewide?
I’m no mathematician. But this just doesn’t pass the stink test.
UPDATE 2: Welcome Politics in Minnesota reader!
UPDATE 3: Power Line notes that the Princeton Research Study Group is behind Newsweek’s polls – which came in dead last for accuracy in 2008.
Last week, DFL bloggers thought they’d caught Tom Emmer “lying”.
The putative “lie”, of course, was that the Emmer Campaign didn’t notify the Campaign Finance Board that Mark Buesgens had left the campaign until a week later, after Buesgens had been accused of Driving While Intoxicated, and the campaign figured “well, no time like the present”.
This, of course, being how most average people handle niggling paperwork.
“Nooooo!”, shrieked the leftybloggers, “failure to change the name, all evidence aside, is proof of a coverup!”
I’d like to think this sort of joyless, nagging, phony punctiliousness is a new, irritating trend of the wonkish left. Unfortunately, it’s a very old, irritating trend of the wonkish left.
I’ve dug back through history and found several examples of this pathology in action.
———-
April 1912:
LOCATION: The deck of SS Titanic.
FIRST OFFICER LIGHTOLLER: “OK, everyone form an orderly line for the boats…”
STEVEN MICAH TIMMERMAN (A wobbly and lefty pamphleteer): “Wait! Do all those lifeboats have the Coast-Guard-mandated number of certified lifejackets?
LIGHTOLLER: “What? Look, people have to get into the lifeboats, or we’ll have fifteen hundred dead!”
TIMMERMAN: “I will have the liability lawyers on your ass so fast you’ll be screaming “uncle”…
LIGHTOLLER: “What the hell do you want us to do?”
TIMMERMAN: “Look, if you want to send all “the rich” off into these unsafe lifeboats, go for it – but I’m going to send the working class off to search for enough life jackets to fit the letter of the law! You will not kill the poor with your substandard lifeboats!”
(and scene).
———-
December 7, 1941:
LOCATION: Opana Radar Station, the northern tip of Oahu, Hawaii.
PRIVATE JONES: “Sir, I have a large radar contact coming in from the north. The report is on your desk”
MAJOR ERIC MICAH PULSEY: Oh, my goddess, Private Jones; what is this? “We have at this time no idea what a group of planes would be coming from the north for” What the hell is that?
JONES: Sir?
PULSEY: Ending a sentence with a preposition, Jones? Go and retype this report. What the hell are you, some ignorant red-stater?
———-
December 31, 1999:
SCENE: The US-Canadian border crossing at Vancouver.
BORDER PATROLPERSON DAVID MICAH MINDELBERG: “Sir, what are you doing with this huge truck full of fertilizer and diesel fuel?”
ABU HADJ AL-JIHADI: “Er…I am not coming to build a bomb to desroy a Millenium celebration…”
MINDELBERG: “Well, duh. The millenium doesn’t begin until 2001! What kind of stupid wingnut do you think I am?
AL-JIHADI: Heh heh.
MINDELBERG: Don’t insult my intelligence. Drive on, and don’t be an idiot.
With the news that Tom Emmer has pulled to a tiny, inside-the-margin-of-error lead in the latest Rasmussen poll, I’ve joked that it’s about time for a Star/Tribune “Minnesota Poll” showing Mark Dayton leading by an improbably huge margin.
And sure enough, here it is. It shows Dayton leading Emmer 39-30, with Horner eating up 18 points.
The key, as with all Minnesota Polls, is in the sampling; the methodology seems to be “poll Democrats until we get the result that’ll make Democrats feel better and want to come to the polls”. And if you look at the “methodology” page (and the Strib has got to be assuming you won’t), it’s right there:
The self-identified party affiliation of the random sample is: 35 percent Democrat, 28 percent Republican and 28 percent independent. The remaining 9 percent said they were members of another party, no party or declined to answer.
So the Strib claims to believe, in this electoral season, that there will be five Democrat voters for every four GOP voters, and (apparently) that independents will break the same way they did two years ago.
The Washington post carried this oddly-constructed PDF showing the Minnesota Poll’s statistical history over the past five decades or so. For MN Polls conducted since Rob Davies took over the Poll (I’ll add emphasis)…:
The final GOP poll number was on average 5.20 percent points under the actual GOP result in the election. -5.20 percentage points is outside the margin of error in the Minnesota Poll.
The final DFL poll number was on average 2.06 percent points under the actual DFL result in the election. -2.06 percentage points is inside the margin of error in the Minnesota Poll.
Since 1998, the Minnesota Poll has underestimated the GOP result in elections by an average of 7.26 percent but underestimated the DFL result by only .054 percent.
I’ll remind you that if the Minnesota poll were accurate, we’d be referring to Governor Humphrey (the poll showed Skip with a strong lead over Coleman, with Ventura well out of the running), Senator Mondale (who had a five point lead in the MN Poll on the eve of the ’02 election), Governor Moe (to whom the MNPoll gave a slim lead, while significantly overpolling IP candidate Tim Penny in ’02), Governor Hatch (yep, slated to win in ’06)…
…indeed, the only year they’ve been genuinely accurate was ’08. The year of the great Democrat/DFL blowout. That’s because, in effect, the Minnesota Poll always predicts DFL blowouts. They were finally right in ’08.
This poll, like all Minnesota Polls, has only one purpose; to help revive the DFL’s flagging spirits. Mark Dayton has run a perfunctory, frankly terrible campaign, notable for the nastiness of the “third-party” attack ad campaign largely paid for by Dayton, his ex-wife and family. His support is slipping in reputable polls.
And that’s why we have the Minnesota Poll.
The serial dishonesty and, let’s be honest, in-the-bag-ness of the Minnesota Poll was the straw the broke the camel’s back when I last unsubscribed to the Strib back in 2004.
If you are a Minnesota conservative who is hoping for a sane governor next year, this is not a reason to jump off the ledge – but it is a reason to remember this is a tough campaign. Emmer’s doing well, but he still faces a full-court press – the bought-off, in-the-bag media, a ruthless pack of well-heeled institutional hyenas, and the DFL machine. If you can peel off a few bucks, or spend some time calling or door-knocking, it’s needed.
Bring on the real polling – in November!
UPDATE: Luke Matthews at True North notes that Princeton Survey Research Associations – which did the polling and analysis – has a “business model” that invites analytical wierdness:
For many clients, PDS provides a cleaned, unweighted dataset. But for the client who does not want to weigh the data themselves, PDS can provide weighting services to take into account known probabilities involving the sampling process or known variations in the non-response among groups.
In other words, these non-response groups [the large percentage of “no-response/different party” respondents – a high nine percent in the MN Poll – Ed] have been manipulated. By manipulated, I mean, they made it up. In their vast experience as pollsters, they have discovered that non-response means, this, whatever this may be. Since they are providers to Pew Research, a group with notoriously liberal findings, we can conclude that non-response to Princeton means they’re probably liberals.
So, to recap. We have a poll with a huge margin of error for the population size, a presumption of liberal bias when weighing cell phone sampling, a large number of non-independent, non-responsive people, who are presumed liberal by a liberal polling firm who works exclusively with liberal groups.
If Joel Demos doesn’t win the MN CD5 race – and let’s face it, he’s a dark horse – at least someone should hire him away from his day job to do political ads.
(Or whomever is doing the ads for Demos – and as tightly-budgeted as Demos’ bid is, I can’t imagine he’s got a lot of staff on the case…)
I’ve said it many times in this forum; Gay Marriage isn’t the biggest issue to me.
Oh, I believe “marriage” is about a guy and a gal and having kids, sure enough. I believe that marriage is something sanctioned by the God I believe in. I believe the religious reason is rooted in an evolutionary reason – children need both male and female parents to grow and develop as best they can (and, with that in mind, I’ll also say that I support gay adoption, in preference to single parenthood, if only because the stresses of single parenting are so very very intense). There is not a single significant religion in the world that sanctions same-sex marriage. Not that all of the world’s religions are internally unified on the idea of same-sex marriage, as with any other political issue.
You, naturally, don’t have to believe in my God, or believe in Him in the way I do, which is why our government separates church and state. And why I believe there’s a case to be made to allow single-sex couples to sign contracts with each other (and, for that matter, to allow any religious denomination to find some way to theologically justify it).
But while it’s not a big issue for me, personally – I’m here, I’m straight, and I’m not going away – it certainly is a defining issue for a lot of people, including quite a few that aren’t traditional Republicans.
Earlier this week, Archbishop Nienstedt, the top Catholic in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area, released a video – on Youtube, and on a DVD that is being mailed to Catholics throughout the region via the good graces of an “unnamed donor” – that pretty much laid down the ecclesiastical smack on single-sex marriage.
Now, Nienstedt is a social conservative, in contrast with his predecessor. His message is far from unexpected.
What is unexpected is the regional social left’s response to Nienstedt’s video. They are outraged.
It almost seems out of proportion to the video; after all, Nienstedt has been a social conservative all along; as such, among largely traditionally left-of-center Twin Cities Catholics, he’s been a known quantity since long before he became Archbishop.
No – they are outraged becausesame sex marriage, even in traditionally “purple” Minnesota, is not just a loser for the Dems; a new poll shows it’s a potential game-changer.
Lawrence Research carried out a poll three weeks ago, among 600 likely voters. The poll, by way of level-setting, discovered Minnesotans feel the state is on the wrong track by a 57-31 margin.
And, as befitted a poll taken in August, two weeks after the primary, as Tom Emmer’s campaign was just getting started, the initial poll result looked good for Mark Dayton, who pulled out to a 40-33 lead, with Horner drawing 14%.
Then, and only then, the pollsters brough same-sex marriage into the picture. The Minnesotans polled say “marriage” should be between a man and a woman by a 58-36 margin, with very few – 6% – undecided.
The sample also overwhelmingly believe that future legislation about the definition of marriage should be carried out by the voters, rather than the Legislature or the Federal courts (62%, 6% and 19% respectively, with 13% undecided).
Here’s where it got interesting. I’ll quote from the Lawrence poll:
5. Have you heard or read anything about efforts to have the state legislature legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota?
Yes, aware……………………………….. 51
No, unaware…………………………….. 49
Initially I was surprised the “Yes” was that low. Then I realized – the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) have wanted to soft-pedal this news. After reflection, I’m surprised it’s that high.
Because I suspect they knew how this next question was going to break out:
6. Gubernatorial candidates Mark Dayton, DFL, and Tom Horner, Independence, both support same-sex marriage while Tom Emmer, Republican, believes that marriage should be preserved as only between a man and a woman. In light of this, if the election were held today, would you vote for … (ALTERNATE READING 1-2-3 AND 2-1-3)
Tom Emmer, Republican……………… 43
Mark Dayton, DFL……………………. 36
Tom Horner, Independence Party…. 11
[UNDECIDED]………………………… 10
Catch that? Among this sample, introducing the notion that the definition of marriage will be taken out of the peoples’ hands and given to the legislature or, worse, the courts causes a 14 points swing.
And the poll has ramifications down-ticket, in state legislative races, as well:
7. Let’s say you have decided to vote for a candidate for the state legislature because you agree with most of his or her positions on the issues. Then, let’s say you find out that your chosen candidate has the opposite position of yours on the marriage issue. Would you still vote for that candidate or would you switch and vote for someone who agrees with your position on the marriage issue?
Would still vote for original candidate………………….. 47
Would switch and vote for someone else……………… 38
[NO OPINION]…………………………………………….. 15
That means over a third of respondents would ditch a legislative candidate who favored legislating single-sex marriage from above (almost invariably DFLers).
Bear in mind, this poll was taken in a linear order. There’s a reason for this; it helps pollsters measure how ideas change peoples’ minds. The poll took one more look at the Governor race:
Looking ahead to November’s election for governor one more time …
8. If you knew that Mark Dayton and Tom Horner are opposed to letting the people vote on the same-sex marriage issue, and Tom Emmer favors letting the people vote on the same-sex marriage issue, would you then vote for … (ALTERNATE READING 1-2-3 AND 2-1-3)
Tom Emmer, Republican……………… 44
Mark Dayton, DFL……………………. 33
Tom Horner, Independence Party…. 11
[UNDECIDED]………………………… 12
Now, it’s only 600 voters. The margin of error is 4.1% either way.
But the overall impression – people want to decide the future of marriage themselves, even in “liberal”, “purple” Minnesota – is broad and unmistakeable.
And that’s why Nienstedt, his DVD, and his un-named mysterious donor are all public enemies-number-one for the regional left.
For my purposes, this election is about the economy, jobs and the role of government. But same sex marriage is a sleeping giant of an issue throughout this state.
The latest Rasmussen Poll shows the race still a dead heat, but with Emmer ahead:
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Minnesota Voters shows Emmer earning 42% support to Dayton’s 41% when leaners are included. Independence Party candidate Tom Horner is a distant third with nine percent (9%) of the vote. Six percent (6%) like some other candidate in the race, and two percent (2%) are undecided.
The findings move the race to a Toss-Up from Leans Democratic in the Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 Gubernatorial Scorecard.
Dayton’s supporters will do the usual bleating; it’s a landline phone survey, yadda yadda.
And some of the local wonk class are astounded that Tom Horner, who drew 18 points in the last KSTP/Survey USA poll, is down to 9 in the lastest Raz.
I think there’s a rational reason for it; I’ll add emphasis:
This is the first survey of the governor’s race to include leaners. Leaners are those who initially indicate no preference for either of the candidates but answer a follow-up question and say they are leaning towards a particular candidate. Rasmussen Reports now considers results with leaners the primary indicator of the race.
Excluding leaners, Emmer edges Dayton 36% to 34%, and Horner chalks up 18% support. Horner’s loss of support when leaners are added highlights the tendency in most races for supporters of third-party candidates to gravitate to one of the major party nominees as Election Day approaches.
I suspect an awful lot of people consider third-party candidacies as a sort of personal “protest” against the major parties – up until it becomes real to them.
We’ll be talking about one of those issues that are making the leaners lean real hard, at noon today on Shot In The Dark.
If you are a charter school parent, no matter what your politics, I urge you reprint this article and pass it around to your friends,
While Minnesota is proud of its education system, its great achilles heel is the inner city. The Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, have among the highest achievement gaps in the nation between white and black students – and pouring money into the districts isn’t changing anything. Indeed, as the budget has skyrocketed, the situation’s gotten worse.
So for many parents in the Twin Cities, charter schools have been a lifeline – a place where their kids aren’t just numbers on a school district spreadsheet, where they have some input into how the school works. The vast majority of parents in inner-city charter schools are, ironically, minorities. Most are below the district income averages.
Mark Dayton wants to slash state funding to charter schools.
His budget plan (both of his tries at a budget plan, actually) will slash lease aid payments to charter schools.
This is a huge financial hit.
When people throw around figures like “it costs $11,000 a year to teach a student in this district”, remember that public districts can float bonds to build their school buildings, as well as get extra money from special local school tax levies. Charter schools are forbidden by (a stupid) state law from spending their money on buying buildings.
The state allots a certain amount of “lease aid” to charter schools, which helps them rent space.
Dayton wants to slash this aid.
It may or may not affect well-heeled schools in tony suburbs. But it will shred poor inner city charter schools.
So, all you black, Latino, H’mong, Native American, or Muslim parents who pulled your kids out of your wretched inner-city public schools? Most of you, statistically, will vote for Mark Dayton.
You are voting for your kids’ ticket back to sub-mediocrity. The ticket back to being treated like a number. The ticket back to being written off, and treated like make-work programs for the teachers’ union, rather than future people with immense potential.
Mark Dayton cares more about feeding money to the union thathelped cause your neighborhood schools’ collapse than he does about your kids and the path to education that you, the parents, have chosen.
I’m not one to jump to rash conclusions. I’d hate to have my self-appointed betters call me a “lazy-ass activist”, after all – that is one of those things where the mere accusation makes it so, at least if the subject is a conservative in Minnesota, apparently.
So I sent the following email to the Dayton cmpaign.
I’m Mitch Berg, of WWTC-AM’s “Northern Alliance Radio Network” and the blogs “Shot In The Dark” and “True North”.
Senator Dayton has said that he attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst after graduating from Yale University.
I called Amherst; they said they have no record of a Mark Dayton, DOB 1/26/1947, attending the institution.
I’m sure this is just a paperwork flub on someone’s part. Would there be any way the campaign could confirm Senator Dayton’s attendance?
Thanks, and stay dry!
Mitch Berg
“The Northern Alliance Radio Network”
WWTC-AM, Eagan, MN
“Shot In The Dark” – www.shotinthedark.info
“True North” – www.looktruenorth.com
I’ll be following up by phone later today, if I don’t get an answer.
Vice President Biden said Thursday the conservative Tea Party movement might be “the best thing to happen” to Democrats with the midterm elections approaching.
St. Paul- According to documents obtained by the Republican Party of Minnesota from the New York City Department of Education under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), Democrat gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton was licensed by New York City as a teacher under “Alternative B Requirements.” As a candidate for governor, Dayton is supported by Education Minnesota, a teachers union fiercely opposed to alternative teacher licensure.
He did, of course, teach. Sorta – emphasis added throughout:
According to the New York City Department of Education documents, Dayton taught in City schools through an alternative teaching program called Teachers, Inc (page 1). As part of his arrangement with Teachers Inc., Dayton enrolled in courses at the University of Massachusetts (page 12) after graduating from Yale University in June 1969. Dayton worked as a “term sub” for 89 days (pages 25-27, 30) from 1969-1970.
Near as I can tell, “term sub” is a form of “long term substitute”.
Dayton submitted his resignation to the New York City Department of Education during the middle of the school year on January 11, 1971 for “personal reasons” (pages 28-29). As a candidate for public office, Dayton has routinely left the impression with Minnesotans that he was a full-time public school teacher for two years. [Note: Page number references correspond to numbers on top right hand corner of documents provided by the New York City Department of Education to the Republican Party of Minnesota]
I’ll work on getting a copy of those dox to see what else might be socked away in there.
Drake continues:
“Mark Dayton was able to teach in New York’s schools under an alternative teacher licensure program, but he is now captive to the teachers union, which opposes this common sense reform that a supermajority of Minnesotans support and which allowed him to teach forty years ago. While Dayton has personally benefited from an alternative teacher licensure program, he promises to protect powerful special interests and defend the status quo as governor.
So he was a substitute teacher who worked the equivalent of 18 school weeks over a school year and a half (during which, by my math, he’s have been eligible to have taught 45 or so weeks). Cool.
The story, so far, is that Dayton, having graduated from Yale without any “teaching hours” or certification, went to the U of Massachusetts at Amherst to get qualified.
So I took the liberty of contacting the public information office at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
This was the email I got back:
From: [redacted] <[redacted]@urd.umass.edu>
To: “mitch[redacted]@[redacted].com” <mitch[redacted]@[redacted].com>
Hello,
According to the registrar’s office, the name of Mark Dayton, born 1/26/47, does not come up when searched at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
I wanted to confirm this, just to make sure there was no mistake. I sent the following:
So yesterday former Emmer campaign manager Mark Buesgens was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.
Well, that’s news, sorta. Granted, Buesgens left the campaign over a week ago, but facts are facts.
Of course, the media flogged the “story” that Tom Emmer had had two alcohol-related careless driving convictions, in 1981 and 1991 – nearly twenty and thirty years ago – earlier in the campaign.
So at least the Buesgens story was timely
Now, this…:
Another DWI with Emmer campaign ties
Posted at 6:31 PM on September 20, 2010 by Tim Pugmire
Filed under: Campaign 2010, Minnesota Governor
The Associated Press is reporting that the former manager of Republican Tom Emmer’s gubernatorial campaign, David Fitzsimmons, was arrested for drunk driving…
Hm. I’ve met Dave. Didn’t know about this.
Was it…recent?
…shortly after stepping down from that job back in May.
Fitzsimmons was arrested for DWI in Hennepin County on May 16,
May 16? This story happened after the convention, and three months before the primary, but MPR’s Tim Pugmire felt the need to run the story yesterday? Why, what could have possibly happened yesterday?
Could it have been that Fitzsimmons was convicted of DWI yesterday?
but he was not convicted.
Ah. So he was acquitted yesterday?
From the Henco court record:
08/25/2010
Disposition (Judicial Officer: Hedlund, Deborah)
1. Traffic regulation – failure to drive in single lane-hazardous
Convicted
2. Traffic – DWI – Operate Motor Vehicle – Alcohol Concentration 0.08 Within 2 Hours
Dismissed
Er…so the case was disposed of three weeks ago?
So the “news” is not actually “new?”
The revelation about Fitzsimmons followed today’s earlier news that state Rep. Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan, was arrested for DWI Saturday in Wright County. Buesgens was Emmer’s campaign chairman until about a week ago.
Odd choice of term, “revelation”. It’s the noun form of “to reveal”. Who “revealed” it?
Because here’s my guess: The DFL has been sitting on this “revelation” since May. Dayton’s budget plan is in trouble, his numbers are diving, and he really has nothing up his sleeve. His opposition people did what oppo people do; found an opportunity (Buesgen’s arrest) to drop the Fitzsimmons story. They placed it with the media, to further the narrative that the Dayton Campaign has been running since the beginning. You know – the one that starts…:
Emmer had his own DWI issues in 1981 and 1991.
…and has been rammed home with about 20,000 ads paid for by “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” over the past few months.
It’s better for the DFL if people focus on drunk driving incidents (even if they have nothing to do with the campaign, with Emmer’s policies and plans, than on the ongoing disintegration of the Dayton campaign.
In an attempt to drum up interest, Horner will appear outside the Metrodome Sunday before the kickoff of the Vikings’ first home game of the season to pitch his proposal to fans. Under Horner’s proposal, the team would pay 40 percent of the cost.
Well, good luck with that, Tom. The precedent has long been set; teams will stomp their feet and make noises about moving to Los Angeles if they have to pony up a greasy nickel.
Leaving you, the taxpayer – who will already be paying for two billion in new taxes (in the first biennium) – holding the purple bag:
The state would issue 40-year bonds for about $32 million a year and fans would shoulder part of the burden, most likely through higher ticket prices.
Yay! More debt! To subsidize billionaires!
Of course, Tom Horner’s PR firm has been in bed with the ‘queens for years:
Horner’s former firm has longstanding business connections with the Vikings, although Horner said he has not been personally involved in previous contracts. He did take his plans to the Vikings in a private meeting this summer, but said there is a firewall between him and his old firm.
I’d like to see that “firewall” vetted. Perhaps after Horner’s budget is vetted by the MN Department of Revenue?
Hugh Hewitt has put out a bleg for his top twenty races to watch and, ideally, pony up for. These are not just big races with solid conservative candidates; these are big races with solid conservatives facing serious opposition (hence no John Hoeven, who will win by fifty points), and with major down-ticket and regional significance.
Reacting t0 the news that the Minnesota Department of Revenue found that Mark Dayton’s original budget “plan” came in about $3 billion light in its attempt to close the budget shortfall by “taxing the rich” (Minnesotans with adjusted gross incomes greater than $150K for a family or $130K for an individual), the Dayton campaign is apparently going to try to get it right this time:
Democrat Mark Dayton’s campaign spokeswoman says the campaign will release an updated budget plan [today]. The campaign has been crunching the numbers after the MN Department of Revenue released an analysis that Dayton’s proposed income tax hike on Minnesota’s top earners wouldn’t generate the money he predicted.
So what’s going to change?
No idea.
All we do know is what we heard from a source who told conservative bloggers that someone overheard Dayton in his campaign HQ bellowing “Plug the damned hole!” last week after the wheels came off the first version of his “plan”.
