After the release of the welter of ludicrous polls from the Strib and the Humphrey Institute that – inevitably – showed Mark Dayton with improbably large leads earlier this week, the grownups have finally spoken.

First came the public release of an internal poll by the Emmer campaign showing the race an even-up, 40-40 tie.

And the KSTP/SurveyUSA poll (rated as the third best polling in the US by left-leaning Nate Silver at 538) shows a statistical tie – 39-38 Dayton, with a four point margin of error:

The poll shows Emmer has expanded his lead among men by two points, while Dayton’s lead among women has fallen 14 points since earlier this month. Emmer leads by five points among people ages 18 to 49; Dayton has a nine-point lead among those over age 50.

This tracks with results I saw a few weeks back in District 32B.

Here’s the part I love; the Leftybloggers’ constant bleat of “omitting cell phone users underpolls Democrats” is shown to be so much wind in sails:

For the first time, the KSTP/SurveyUSA poll includes a survey of people who only use cell phones. Among this population, who tend to be younger voters, Dayton and Emmer are both at 35 percent. Fifteen percent of these voters are undecided.

The good news for conservatives (and ergo Minnesota’s future)?

• Emmer is up strongly in the SurveyUSA poll: Two weeks ago, Emmer was down by five. with a four point margin of error.
• Emmer is up by an equal margin in internal polling:  On October eleventh – less than three weeks ago – a source inside the Emmer campaign told me that internal polling was showing Emmer down by four points.  The latest poll shows, as does the Survey USA poll, a four point jump for Emmer.

Polls, as everyone who knows polls will tell you, are a snapshot in time.  Comparing the snapshots over the past month shows that Emmer is doing exactly what his campaign has always been aiming to do; surging at the end.