Photo: Conservapedia

Photo: Conservapedia

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar gets more plaudits in today’s New York Times for soldiering on as Minnesota’s sole senator. And she’s staying popular as she stays busy — though that isn’t quite good enough for one University of Minnesota political-science blog.

Klobuchar, on a trip to Vietnam with Sen. John McCain, made time to talk to national reporters by phone on Tuesday about how her office is coping with constituent-service demands normally shouldered by two Senate offices.

Roll Call highlighted the fact that four more months of delay in seating a second senator from Minnesota would make Klobuchar the record-holder for longest solo service in the Senate’s modern era. (It’s possible: Gov. Tim Pawlenty says the Al Franken/Norm Coleman contest could yet take “months,” and his is one of two signatures that must appear on the election certificate.)

In the Times story, Klobuchar commented that Minnesota now has common cause with the District of Columbia, which isn’t provided with a voting member of Congress in the U.S. Constitution. “We have the same issue of taxation without representation at this point,” she said.

With that quote Klobuchar sets another kind of record. She’s the second woman from Minnesota’s congressional delegation to make use of the famous “taxation without representation” slogan from the Boston Tea Party over the last six weeks — and the first to do so coherently.

Yet another Klobuchar claim to fame: Her job-approval rating (59 percent) is fourth highest among those of the 27 senators whose constituents are regularly polled by Survey USA. And her approval rating has fluctuated the least over the last 15 months, by only five from 58 to 63 percentage points.

But Eric Ostermeier, the data-digger who unearthed these gems at the University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics blog, also dispenses this chunk of coal for Klobuchar:

Klobuchar’s numbers are so flat they suggest the state’s lone U.S. Senator is both succeeding at sustaining the support of those Minnesotans who voted her into office in 2006, and failing to convert any of those who did not.

Really? The numbers that Smart Politics cites — Klobuchar’s 58.1 percent of the vote in 2006 and her 59 percent approval in last month’s survey — do “suggest“ that conclusion. But what does Survey USA’s data actually say about who has been providing Klobuchar’s relatively steady level of support?

It turns out that beneath the tranquil surface of Klobuchar’s “flat” numbers you find hidden turbulence. Voters of various party affiliations and ideologies have moved in waves of support for and disaffection with Klobuchar throughout her time in office.

For example, the proportion of self-identified Republicans who said they approved of Klobuchar’s job performance fell 20 percentage points (from 45 percent to 25 percent) between January and March this year. But her overall approval stayed steady as Democrats’ approval increased by 10 percentage points (from 76 to 86) and independents’ by 8 (from 54 to 62).

And that’s what you might expect of a politician who, as Ostermeier puts it, strives to seem “comparatively non-political in contrast to her past and (probable) future Gopher State colleagues, Norm Coleman and Al Franken.” The more political elements of her constituency are bound to be disappointed in a less political approach.

Klobuchar’s recent running with Senate “blue dog” Democrats, bound to disappoint her more progressive constituents, came since Survey USA completed its latest poll. It will be interesting to see whether the makeup of her overall steady support continues to shift.