{"id":10802,"date":"2010-05-07T12:59:51","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T17:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10802"},"modified":"2010-05-07T13:25:23","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T18:25:23","slug":"waiting-for-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10802","title":{"rendered":"Waiting For The End Of The World"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to a KSTP\/SurveyUSA poll, Republicans have passed Democrats among likely voters<\/a>\u00a0in Minnesota:<\/p>\n

The SurveyUSA poll, commissioned by KSTP-TV, found that 36 percent of likely voters identify themselves as Republicans, while 35 percent say they’re Democrats. Twenty-four percent call themselves independents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it’s really a tosser; there’s a four point margin of error.\u00a0 But I strongly suspect those 24 points worth of indies will erode, and move right, when they get the tax bill that the Supreme Court of Minnesota (SCOM) has dumped back in their lap.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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By means of comparison, a Star Tribune Minnesota Poll conducted a year ago found that 37 percent of Minnesotans called themselves independents, 36 percent said they were Democrats and 20 percent identified themselves as Republicans.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While that sounds like a huge surge, it needs to be tempered by the fact that the Minnesota Poll isn’t so much a “poll” as\u00a0 “morale-building tool for the DFL”.<\/p>\n

But the surge in enthusiasm – especially compared to the dead rooms the GOP faced in 2006 and 2008 – is notable:<\/p>\n

The SurveyUSA poll also found that Republican gubernatorial endorsee Tom Emmer is ahead of his three DFL rivals, although the significance of the results is hard to gauge this early in the campaign.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The poll\u00a0 – which, let’s be honest, is fairly meaningless at six months out – shows Emmer with an eight point lead over Dayton, 11 over Entenza.<\/p>\n

In matchup against Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Mark Dayton and Matt Entenza, Emmer was supported by 41 percent of likely voters. The DFLers were each backed by about one-third, while Independence Party candidate Tom Horner was supported by about 10 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Early polling almost always shows the “Independence” Party – the former party of Jesse Ventura, and which has had absolutely zero impact as anything but a spoiler since Ventura left office – with a disproportionate impact; a “Minnesota Poll” conducted the week before the 2002 election, at the twilight of Ventura’s era, showed Palwenty and his opponents, DFLer Roger Moe and Indy Tim Penny, in a statistical tie;\u00a0 Penny shed close to 40% of his numbers by election day (if you assume, again, that the MinnPoll is anything but a DFL morale booster, and I do not).\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it seems the time is right for a solid conservative – especially one who is tuned to take advantage of the sticker shock the DFL Legislature is about to dump on the electorate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to a KSTP\/SurveyUSA poll, Republicans have passed Democrats among likely voters\u00a0in Minnesota: The SurveyUSA poll, commissioned by KSTP-TV, found that 36 percent of likely voters identify themselves as Republicans, while 35 percent say they’re Democrats. Twenty-four percent call themselves independents. Of course, it’s really a tosser; there’s a four point margin of error.\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mngop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10803,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802\/revisions\/10803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}