Toss-up between Dayton and Emmer in new poll

A new poll out from KSTP/SurveryUSA puts Democrat Mark Dayton only slightly ahead of Republican Tom Emmer in the Minnesota gubernatorial race. Dayton draws 38 percent in the poll to Emmer’s 36 percent support, though that two percent margin is well within the survey’s +/- 3.9 percent margin of error. The poll was conducted between Sept. 12-14 and sampled 656 likely Minnesota voters.

Headed into the early August primary, almost every poll put Dayton well ahead of his Republican opponent. KSTP’s last survey of the race from the weekend before the primary had Emmer trailing Dayton by a 14-point margin. But the campaign dynamic appears to have shifted once each candidate locked up his respective party’s nomination. The only other post-primary public poll had the two candidates tied at 34 percent.

Beyond the top line numbers in the poll, the results indicate that Dayton performs well in key demographic groups. Dayton leads female voters by 13 points over Emmer. The poll included a slightly higher percentage of likely male voters, whereas 2006 midterm exit polls showed more women voting than men. The difference in sampling between the current poll and that exit poll is slight, but with a large divide between support among the sexes, a unrepresentative sample could skew the results.

One interesting demographic in the poll is the age divide in support. The national trend is for younger voters to lean Democratic, with senior citizens as the strongest backers of the GOP. But that trend is reversed in Minnesota, with Emmer leading voters aged 18-34 by a 16 percent spread over Dayton, while the Democrat receives his strongest support above 50 years old.

Independence Party candidate Tom Horner received 18 percent in the survey, a significant uptick in support from previous polls, which had generally shown him at around 10-12 percent. The poll was conducted right after Horner received an increase in positive media coverage including an endorsement from former Gov. Arne Carlson and a Star Tribune editorial that stopped one step short of endorsing the IP candidate.

Patrick Caldwell is the American Independent’s Minnesota correspondent.