Another day brings another post-recount poll of Minnesotans on the U.S. Senate contenders, the recount process itself and what should happen next. According to a Daily Kos-Research 2000 survey, 47 percent of voters support seating Al Franken in the Senate (at least provisionally) and the same percentage oppose former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s legal challenge to the recount. Though conducted only a day or two after a similar poll by SurveyUSA for KSTP-TV, the Daily Kos results show some intriguing differences.

Updated number-crunching after the jump.

Favorable and unfavorable opinions of Al Franken and Norm Coleman

in the Kos poll, 49 percent say they have a favorable opinion of Franken — 4 percent more than those with an unfavorable opinion. A favorable opinion of Norm Coleman is harder to find, being shared by only 41 percent of respondents. But what’s really stunning is Coleman’s negative number: 58 percent say they have unfavorable opinion of him.

Those results are markedly different from the other poll, in which both men’s approval percentages were below 40 percent but neither had unfavorable opinion rates above 45 percent. Variations in polling may explain some of the difference: the KSTP poll allows both “Neutral” and “No Opinion” responses, while Kos only allows “No Opinion.”  In the KSTP poll the two answer categories comprise a full 19 percent of the Coleman responses, but in the Kos poll only 1 percent have no opinion of Coleman.

Polls differ in respondents’ party affiliations

But the most significant difference between the two polls is in the distribution by party affiliation subgroups within their sample populations. In conducting the survey for the left-leaning Daily Kos, Research 2000 included far fewer (27 percent) voters who called themselves politically independent or “other,” and more who identify as Republican (33 percent) or Democrat (40 percent). SurveyUSA, whose polls generally and for KSTP-TV specifically have sometimes been accused of skewing right politically, included only 25 percent Republican and 33 percent Democratic voters — with a whopping 39 percent “independent.”

Perceived fairness of recount process

Sampling differences appear to play out in a question that both polls asked: Was the recount process fair, and if not, to which candidate was it unfair? The Research 2000-Daily Kos results show 63 percent think the recount was fair to both candidates, with only 17 percent finding the process “mostly unfair” to Coleman and 12 percent, unfair to Franken. In SurveyUSA’s poll, 31 percent saw the recount as unfair to Coleman, 3 percent unfair to Franken, and 56 percent fair to both.

Things really got squirrelly within the subgroups of each poll. The more heavily weighted SurveyUSA “independent” subgroup was twice as likely (28 percent) to see unfairness toward Coleman as their Recount 2000-Kos counterparts (14 percent). The dominant Democrats in the Recount 2000-Kos poll managed to find unfairness toward Franken in greater numbers (18 percent, compared to 5 percent in SurveyUSA’s). And SurveyUSA’s relatively scant pool of Republicans was far more inclined (68 percent) to see injury to the Republican candidate than those in equivalent subgroup of the Kos poll (32 percent). In fact, a majority of Kos’ Republicans (54 percent) saw the recount as fair to both candidates, a view shared by only 23 percent in SurveyUSA’s Republican pool.

Coleman court challenge

Both polls measured support for Coleman’s contesting of the recount results in court. The Daily Kos poll found 47 percent opposed and 34 percent in favor, with 19 percent not sure. SurveyUSA had 42 percent in favor and 49 percent opposed — a figure interpreted in news reports as meaning half of Minnesotans want Coleman to concede. SurveyUSA did ask flat out whether Coleman should concede, as the first of three supplied answers (all unlikely) to the question “What do you think should happen next?” Forty-four percent thought Coleman should quit; the other options were “Do the re-count again” (8 percent) and “Hold another Senate election altogether” (31 percent).

Who won, and who would you vote for today?

“Who do you think won the U.S. Senate race, Al Franken or Norm Coleman?” The response to that Research 2000-Kos question is: Franken, 46 percent; Coleman, 41 percent; and “Not Sure,” 13 percent.

It’s intriguing to compare that with the results on another Kos question: “If you could vote again for U.S. Senate would you vote for Al Franken the Democrat, Norm Coleman the Republican, or Dean Barkley, an Independent?” (Barkley should actually be termed not as “an Independent” but as “the candidate of the Independence Party” — a third party with major-party status in Minnesota.) Overall, 43 percent would vote for Franken, 40 percent for Coleman, and 15 percent for Barkley. An element of softness in Democratic voter support for Franken widely observed on Election Day is still perceptible: 83 percent of Democrats polled think Franken won, but only 77 percent would vote for him today.

It’s also intriguing to compare the Kos poll’s election re-run with another SurveyUSA-KSTP poll taken Dec. 7, which also asked, if the election were held again today, “who would you vote for?” The results then were much closer to the Election Day results: Coleman, 41 percent; Franken, 40 percent; Barkley 15 percent.

Margin of error

The Research 2000-Daily Kos poll surveyed 600 voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The SurveyUSA-KSTP poll surveyed 500 voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. The margin of error increases at the level of subgroups such as party identification.

Does any of this matter?

Minnesota’s Senate election remains unresolved. So are the polls taken since Nov. 4 really election polls? The crosstabs by gender, age and party affiliation and the questions the polls ask combine to conjure up the feeling of a late-campaign pulse-reading of the electorate, a tantalizing forecast of the coming result. Except, of course, those polled have already voted in this race and aren’t likely to vote again. The shifting opinions among the subgroups can matter only as much as they affect the outlooks of three judges, yet to be named, who will decide Coleman’s court challenge. And perhaps 98 or 99 U.S. senators who have the last word on who is seated and who as politicians are used to putting stock in polls.