In e-mails to the Minnesota Independent this afternoon, KSTP-TV’s Tom Hauser responds to reports that the station gave Republican state Rep. Erik Paulsen’s campaign an early heads-up yesterday about the results of the latest 3rd Congressional District poll that Survey USA conducted for KSTP:

This is the second e-mail about this poll release situation and I have no idea what it’s about.  We release poll results to the campaigns only if they ask for them.  And then only with the understanding they are not to shared with anyone else in anyway (news releases, etc) until after we air them.  As for the last poll, I had one phone message from the Paulsen campaign Sunday morning after they heard on “At Issue” that we would have results Sunday night.  I called them back about five hours later and left them a message to call back for the results.  They never called. I’m not certain if they got them from someone else, but generally I coordinate all polling and release of the information.

I also asked Hauser about whether it was true, as David Dillon’s campaign manager told me today, that complaints about the Independence Party candidate being left off Survey USA’s candidate preference question in the firm’s first poll last week led to a do-over survey in its second 3rd District poll, which was released yesterday. Hauser:

Yes, that is true.  SurveyUSA had earlier done a poll in that race for ”Roll Call” out of Washington, D.C. back in September.  “Roll Call” only had them survey Madia and Paulsen, not understanding the importance and tradition of third-party candidates in Minnesota.  We later commissione[d] our own poll (as a separate SurveyUSA client) and included Dillon.  When we ordered our final poll in the race, SurveyUSA mistakenly duplicated the original “Roll Call” poll question that only included two names, rather than ours, which included all three.  When I pointed this out they agreed to do it again free of charge.  The first poll [done last week] had Paulsen up by one, the second (with Dillon included) had Paulsen up by 5.