So yesterday Minnesota DFLers were grinning like toddlers that’d just made a good pants at this MPR report that referred to this Humphrey Institute poll that showed Dayton beating the DFL primary field, and – more importantly – beating Emmer.
But the media reports on this poll have been, to be charitable, sloppy. To be less charitable, they tip us off at the very least to the Humphrey Institute’s and most likely the media’s bias.
For those of you from out of state, the Humphrey Institute is a University of Minnesota think tank that is largely dedicated toward – wait for it – “better”, bigger government. It tends to be a DFL feeder program.
The story is up-front about the criteria for the DFL primary poll (I’ve added emphasis):
Among likely voters, Mark Dayton (38%) leads Kelliher (28%) and Entenza (6%) in the contest
for the August 10th primary to choose the Democratic Party’s nominee.
That is as opposed to “registered voters”; likely voters are the ones who are most likely to actually make it to the polls.
Now, here is what the Humphrey institute wrote about the GOP race:
The most striking and unusual pattern in the Dayton/Emmer match-up is that a third of
Republicans are defecting from their Party’s candidate, an unusual pattern within the GOP
electorate. Dayton is drawing 11% of Republicans as compared to the 3% of Democrats
supporting Emmer. This may be a temporary blip as Emmer launches his campaign or a sign
that his conservatism may pose a challenge to unifying his party against Dayton.
“Defecting?”
Interesting word choice; it implies that a third of Republicans started out firmly in the Emmer camp, but have left. Is there some prior poll over the past two and a half weeks – which was when Emmer was endorsed in the first place – that showed Republicans were completely united? Sure, there are still some Seifert supporters with ruffled feathers; there are some Ron Paul people who are making a point of remaining undecided; there are still some Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger “Republicans” – read “Democrats with better suits” – lurking around the party.
Which means Emmer’s got his work cut out for him – and the campaign knows that, just as they knew it when they lost the straw poll at the GOP Central Committee meeting by a fairly decisive margin.
So is it a sign that Emmer’s “conservatism” is a problem? It’s possible – but it can not possibly be inferred by any of the data in a single, initial poll five months before the election.
Not that the Twin Cities media will say so.
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