Persistent Question + Late Breaking News
By Mitch Berg
There are two ways to look at today’s PiPress/Horner “Decision Resources” poll.
One of them is accurate.
Option 1: The sky really is falling in on the Emmer campaign, and Tom Horner – a government insider whose very face screams “slick operator” – really did post a nine point gain by selecting a nobody for a running mate and promising to raise taxes in the most anti-tax year in Minnesota memory. Honest.
Option 2: Worried that actual reputable polls were showing Emmer pulling into leads over all three DFL stooges and the would-be spoiler Horner, alarmed by a record surge in MNGOP voter ID and trying to forestall wholesale demoralization among a DFL rank and file that has to look forward to two more months of brutal campaigning followed by getting behind one of three of the least interesting characters in recent Minnesota political history, the left – Horner and the DFL – commissioned a fairly transparently bogus poll to keep their troops’ morale up.
I’m gonna bank on #2.
So is the MNGOP, who has just filed a complaint in the past hour with the campaign finance board over the fishy-looking conflicts of interest between Horner and the polling organization involved in the PiPress poll.
Relax, conservatives. The Minnesota Left is calling in its markers with the consulting class and the media. They’re doing it because Emmer scares the crap out of them.
June 8th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Future polls will definitively answer this question.
It is such early days, I can wait without more than a yawn over the polls right now.
June 8th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
You’re right, Mitch. If the Emmer campaign isn’t collapsing, the only other possible option is a massive conspiracy by two parties and the media to fix a poll that nobody cares about.
Either that, or a poll that’s somewhat biased. The reality is — and always has been — that this race is a tossup. That was the case when the first polls mistakenly showed a significant Emmer lead, and it’s the case now.
June 8th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
A tossup? Between the horror of what Obama and his Politboro are doing and the apathy of the brain-dead who turned out to vote him in in 2008, I think Emmer will do quite well.
June 8th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
I guess I don’t see the “massive conspiracy” part of #2.
One party simply has to produce a poll and it will get coverage in local media (despite the “fact” that “nobody cares about” it, surprisingly). Then, other parties can say it “means stuff” (you know, like their political opponents are “collapsing”).
I’m thinking “somewhat biased” means something very different to Jeff Rosenberg than it does to me, considering Horners “prescient” twittering on this particular poll.
June 8th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Jeff R,
If Michael Brodkorb and i both express a desire for lower taxes, is it a “huge conspiracy”, or the confluence of mutual interests?
Keeping the DFL’s morale up is in the mutual interest of the DFL and the Twin Cities media. Making Horner look like a viable “moderate Republican” alternative is as well.
June 8th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
If Michael Brodkorb and i both express a desire for lower taxes, is it a “huge conspiracy”, or the confluence of mutual interests?
Conspiracy. Also, you are clearly a party operative like Bordkorb. 😉
June 9th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Huge conspiracy. They are bother over six feet tall.
June 9th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Are the Red Greens fielding a candidate or have they lost major party status?
The Ken Pentel ads were kind of funny.
June 9th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
The only poll that matters is the one in November, but that being said, these “polls” won’t mean a damn thing until after 2 events happen, the DFL primary and the first governors debate. Until those things happen these polls are about as useful as tits on a bull.
June 11th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
[…] shows dodgy results for Emmer – the “PiPress” poll earlier this week that was commissioned from a company run by a pal of Tom Horner’s – is the most transparently risible exercise in DFL morale-building since…well, the last […]