{"id":30622,"date":"2012-09-24T06:30:01","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T11:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=30622"},"modified":"2013-09-13T07:52:27","modified_gmt":"2013-09-13T12:52:27","slug":"30622","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=30622","title":{"rendered":"Chanting Points Memo: “Minnesota Poll” Orders Material For A Narrative-Building Spree"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you take the history of the Minnesota Poll as any indication, yesterday’s numbers on the Marriage Amendment<\/a> might be encouraging for amendment supporters:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The increasingly costly and bitter fight over a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is a statistical dead heat, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.<\/p>\n

Six weeks before Election Day, slightly more Minnesotans favor the amendment than oppose it, but that support also falls just short of the 50 percent needed to pass the measure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow. \u00a0That sounds close!<\/p>\n

But as always with these polls, you have to check the fine print. \u00a0And the “Minnesota Poll” buries its fine print in a link well down the page<\/a>; you don’t ever actually find it in the story itself. \u00a0And it contains the partisan breakdown (with emphasis added):<\/p>\n

The self-identified party affiliation of the random sample is: 41 percent Democrat, 28 percent Republican<\/strong> and 31 percent independent or other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s right – to get this virtual tie, the Strib,\u00a0<\/em>in a state that just went through photo-finish elections for Governor and Senator, and has been on the razor’s edge of absolute equality between parties for most of a decade, sampled three Democrats for every two Republicans<\/strong> to get to a tie.<\/p>\n

If you believe – as I do – that the “Minnesota Poll” is first and foremost a DFL propaganda tool<\/a>, intended largely to create a ‘bandwagon effect<\/a>” to suppress conservative turnout (and we’ll come back to that), then this is good news; the Marriage Amendment is likely doing better \u00a0than the poll is showing.<\/p>\n

What it does mean, though, is that they are working to build a narrative; that the battle over gay marriage is much more closely-fought than it is.<\/p>\n

And the narrative’s players are already on board with this poll. \u00a0The\u00a0Strib\u00a0<\/em>duly interviews Richard Carlbom, the former Dayton staffer who is leading the anti-Amendment<\/p>\n

Actually, here’s my bet<\/a>; the November 4 paper will show a “surge of support” that turns out to be much larger than any that actually materializes at the polls.<\/p>\n

More At Noon.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: \u00a0I wrote this piece on Sunday. \u00a0Monday morning, all of the local newscasts duly led with “both ballot initiatives are tied!”.<\/p>\n

If you’re trying to find a construction job in Minnesota, you can get a job putting siding on the DFL’s narrative.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 2: \u00a0Professor David Schultz at Hamline University – no friend of conservatism, he – did something I more or less planned to do on Wednesday; re-ran the numbers with a more realistic partisan breakdown<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Why is the partisan adjustment important? The poll suggests significant partisan polarization for both amendments, with 73% of DFLers opposing the marriage amendment and 71% of GOPers supporting. Similar partisan cleavages also exist with the Elections Amendment. If this is true, take the marriage Amendment support at 49% and opposition at 47%. If DFLers are overpolled by 3% and GOP underpolled by 6%, and if about 3\/4 of each party votes in a partisan way, I would subtract about 2.25% from opposition (3% x .75) and add 4.5% to support (6% x .75) and the new numbers are 53.5% in support and 44.75% against. This is beyond margin or error.<\/p>\n

If one applies the correction to the Elections Amendment there is about an 80% DFL opposition to it and a similar 80% GOP support for it. Then the polls suggest approximately 56.8% support it and 41.6% oppose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which brings us very nearly back to the 3:2 margin \u00a0for the Voter ID amendment, and the tight but solid lead for the Marriage Amendment that every other poll – the reputable ones, anyway – have found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you take the history of the Minnesota Poll as any indication, yesterday’s numbers on the Marriage Amendment might be encouraging for amendment supporters: The increasingly costly and bitter fight over a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is a statistical dead heat, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll. Six weeks before Election […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,24,125],"tags":[262,196,120],"class_list":["post-30622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanting-points-memo","category-culture-war","category-the-great-poll-scam","tag-minnesota-poll","tag-marriage-amendment","tag-polling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30622","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=30622"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30626,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30622\/revisions\/30626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}