{"id":3412,"date":"2008-10-06T06:00:51","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T11:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3412"},"modified":"2010-11-03T22:56:31","modified_gmt":"2010-11-04T03:56:31","slug":"polled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3412","title":{"rendered":"Polled"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 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 <\/em>to try to spin, cook and mangle reality in the DFL’s favor.<\/p>\n

This year, of course, things are different.\u00a0 In what should <\/em>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.\u00a0 And Al Franken has been trailing incumbent Norm Coleman by high single to low double digits.<\/p>\n

The Minnesota Poll, of course, induces its own alternate reality<\/a>, putting Franken up by a blowout-territory 13 points – almost exactly the opposite of a contemporaneous SurveyUSA\/KSTP poll.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like all Minnesota Polls, it’s done to generate glowing, feel-good headlines for Democrats, and assumes nobody will read the fine print.\u00a0 The Minnesota Poll showed a 13 point lead for Franken because they sampled so many more Democrats than Republicans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Details, details?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

The\u00a0 Minnesota Poll has been shredded, over and over again<\/a>.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21,4],"tags":[120],"class_list":["post-3412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-midwest","category-media","tag-polling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412","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=3412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15039,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3412\/revisions\/15039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}