Poll Update

And with this one, I have a new feature for you to examine, in light of the Kennedy campaign’s criticism of the recent Minnesota Poll.  Here’s the standard scatter plot and its underlying data as they now stand.  I’ve taken the liberty of tightening the Minnesota Poll’s results by the poll’s stated margin of error, 3.4 points, hence the red highlighting of its US Senate results.  This poll was taken immediately after the primary, in which the DFL had two strongly contested races and the Republican Party had none.  We can expect that the DFL base has been more engaged and excited than the GOP’s at this particular juncture in the campaign.This poll also has Mike Hatch and Governor Tim Pawlenty locked in a dead heat, which syncs up nicely with Zogby’s recent results, but Rasmussen has given the incumbent Republican a few points’ advantage lately.  None of the recent results are outside the margin of error, so this one should still be taken as a dead heat.  We can expect this gubernatorial campaign to end with an extremely high dollars-spent/swing-votes-earned ratio.

But back to the Senate race for a moment. Here’s a new feature – something similar to confidence intervals. This graph shows, with an estimated margin of error of 4% (3.4% for the current MN Poll), the maximum and minimum of Amy Klobuchar’s and Mark Kennedy’s poll numbers – again, adjusting the MN Poll’s results to the tightest they could be given the poll’s margin of error. What this graph demonstrates is the extremely low probability that Mark Kennedy is actually tied with Amy Klobuchar going into the election. For such a scenario to be true, each of these polls would need to be off by their margin of error and then some. This graph also demonstrates that even if the Minnesota Poll were off by its margin of error, perhaps even a little more, it indicates an uptick in support for Amy Klobuchar across Minnesota.  While these are not true confidence intervals, they give a decent representation of the true state of this race.  Obviously we can’t tell exactly what the magic number is – but with a strong degree of certainty, we can say that Amy Klobuchar is connecting with the electorate, and Mark Kennedy is not.

Regardless of the narrative the Kennedy campaign and their consultants try to spin on this poll, it’s not good news for the Republican.  Observers from the NRSC and RNC can’t be looking kindly upon the efforts of the guy they once thought would be their best chance for a pickup in the 2006 cycle – I would expect to see a shift in resources to states where the incumbent Republican is in serious danger, such as Jim Talen in Missouri, where Rasmussen’s latest numbers put him in a dead heat with Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill.