Emmer, Dayton even in new poll

Democrats buoyed by a string of polls showing Mark Dayton pulling ahead by a healthy margin got a sobering report Thursday night: A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll shows Dayton up by 1 point over Republican Tom Emmer in the race for governor. Independence party candidate Tom Horner got 13 percent, with 6 percent undecided. It’s the first SurveyUSA poll in Minnesota to include cell phone users.

The poll found that both Dayton and Emmer had strong support from their bases with 78 percent of DFLers for Dayton and 76 percent of Republicans for Emmer. Independents liked Emmer and Dayton evenly at 37 percent. Self-described moderates broke for Dayton by a 2-to-1 margin, and tea partiers liked Emmer at 25 to 1. Emmer led among men and voters under 50. Dayton took women and voters over 50. Dayton had more support in the Twin Cities and Iron Range while Emmer out-polled him elsewhere.

“Impossible to say who has the late advantage in the Minnesota Governor’s race, according to SurveyUSA’s final pre-election tracking poll for KSTP-TV in Minneapolis,” the pollster says. “DFL candidate Mark Dayton has never trailed, but neither in 3 polls has he led by more than 5 points.”

On cell-phone-only voters, “CPO respondents account for 15% of likely voters. Unlike the findings in some academic research, and unlike SurveyUSA data in California, CPO respondents in Minnesota are not politically different than respondents interviewed on their home phones.”

A MPR/HHH poll released on Thursday showed Dayton up by 12, a St. Cloud State University poll on Tuesday had him up by 10 points, and a Star Tribune poll had him up by 7 percent this weekend.