A new SurveyUSA poll shows Norm Coleman leading DFL challenger Al Franken, 51 percent to 41 percent. Coleman also came out way ahead of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, 57-28, and Darryl Stanton, 57-27.

According to the poll, Coleman leads Franken among women, 49-44, and among independents, 48-42. The poll represents a departure from recent polls, which showed a race quickly moving into “statistically tied” territory.

Call it spin, but this poll has “outlier” written all over it.

Read why after the breakHave a quick look at the graph below showing the trend in the race (the trendlines show a five-poll moving average). It will take at least one or two more polls showing this Coleman bounce to reveal this one as an accurate indicator of what’s happening in the race. Calling Rasmussen Reports…it’s your turn to poll this race.

There are circumstantial points working against the SurveyUSA poll as well. It was conducted on March 12 — and only March 12. Single-day polls are a good deal less accurate than multi-day polls — they run a higher chance of missing important segments of the electorate, and may oversample one group or another. They are also subject to the vagaries of the news cycle — in the case of March 12, it was a bad one for Democrats as revelations of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s dalliances with a prostitute hit the news that day. Just a month ago, SurveyUSA showed Franken leading Coleman among women 51-39. In November, they showed Franken leading among women 49-44. Is it more likely that women’s opinions shifted toward Coleman by between 7 and 10 points in the space of a month, or did a negative news cycle affect women voters’ perception of Democrats on the day when a popular Democrat admitted he cheated on his wife with a call girl?