Polled
By Mitch Berg
2006 was a bit of a holiday from the upper midwest center-right blogosphere’s traditional shredding and hooting at the “Minnesota Poll”, the Star-Tribune’s biennial exercise in DFL promotion. Things generally went to far to the DFL’s favor (we only salvaged the Governor and Lieutenant Governor’s offices in the worst anti-GOP bloodbath since Watergate) that the Strib didn’t need to try to spin, cook and mangle reality in the DFL’s favor.
This year, of course, things are different. In what should be a slam dunk year for Democrats in Minnesota, which is traditionally as solid-Democrat as a state can get without massive head injuries, Mac is holding steady and competitive in most polls. And Al Franken has been trailing incumbent Norm Coleman by high single to low double digits.
The Minnesota Poll, of course, induces its own alternate reality, putting Franken up by a blowout-territory 13 points – almost exactly the opposite of a contemporaneous SurveyUSA/KSTP poll.
Like all Minnesota Polls, it’s done to generate glowing, feel-good headlines for Democrats, and assumes nobody will read the fine print. The Minnesota Poll showed a 13 point lead for Franken because they sampled so many more Democrats than Republicans.
Details, details?
Perhaps – except that this poll is used as a rote talking point by every media figure from Nick Coleman through George Stephanopoulos, who tossed it at Tim Pawlenty on Sunday morning (causing Pawlenty to all-but-chuckle at the reference on the air).
The Minnesota Poll has been shredded, over and over again. Rumors of its demise in the Strib’s budget cuts would seem to be exaggerated, although not so much as rumors that the poll would have to clean up its act if it expected to help rather than hurt the Strib in these polarized times, when merely acting liberal on demand isn’t enough to guarantee acceptance anymore.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Is it to late to subsitute Mitt Romney? Romney-Palin ’08
October 6th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
center-right blogosphere’s –
Everything after was disqualified for gross misrepresentation in the first sentence.
You are, as you described yourself, hardly ‘center’ in anything – you drag things as far to the right as you can, using your own words. Further, saying ‘it’s a world view comparative’ is a lark. Descirbing yourself as somewhere between a military Junta and Social Democracies is hardly ‘the center’, unless you find genocides and death squads as an acceptable point of discussion from which to find comprimise or middle ground on.
Your a right wing nutcup – be proud – you like it, so say it out loud. But when you do, please then remember that you righties embraced the results that showed the state a dead heat – from the same polling agency.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
You embrace Che, Precious Peev.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
penigma,
Your opinion of what “the right” is about is comically detached from reality. And you as an arbiter of “gross misrepresentation”? Practitioner, sure, but arbiter? No. 😉