The new results arrive six weeks after SUSA conducted a similar poll for Roll Call newspaper that showed Paulsen with a 3-point lead. And only a week ago, 400 likely voters told pollsters working for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee they favored Madia by a 5-point margin (a spread that equaled that poll’s margin of error).

Independence Party candidate David Dillon was the choice of 8 percent in the new SUSA poll, with only 3 percent undecided. In August, SUSA didn’t ask about Dillon by name but reported that 10 percent preferred “Other” to the two leading candidates, with 6 percent undecided.

While the new poll shows a 6-point swing toward Madia in overall results, other numbers buried deep within the survey’s crosstabs show widening splits as compared with the SUSA poll of six weeks ago:

- Madia widened his lead among moderates, who now say they prefer him to Paulsen by a margin of 19 points, 54-35 percent; in August it was 46-32.

- The barrage of negative ads from the DCCC appears to have taken a toll on people’s opinion of Paulsen, whose “Unfavorable” rating shot to 31 percent, from 12 percent in August.

- The Paulsen campaign’s negative attacks haven’t pulled Madia down. The 39 percent who hold a “Favorable” impression of Madia in the new poll represent a 10-point increase from August’s results.

- As Congress fell further into disfavor amid weeks of legislative disarray and financial chaos, 3rd District support for Sen. John McCain and Paulsen remained flat. But the proportion of poll respondents who say they’d vote today for Sen. Barack Obama and Madia rose since August by 10 and 11 points, respectively, among the 78 percent of those surveyed who now say they disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

And here are observations gleaned elsewhere:

SUSA still seems to have a questionably GOP-tilted sample of young voters (they break for Paulsen by a 51-40 margin in this poll), but that might be offset by a possibly-skewed 53-38 Madia lead among 50- to-64 year-olds. - Swing State Project

Ashwin has a greater lead over Paulsen in this poll than Obama has over McCain … [and] he has more crossover support than Paulsen, gaining the support of 11 percent of conservatives, while Paulsen only got the support of 6 percent of liberals. – Minnesota Campaign Report

The Swing State Project also observes in the poll results that the indicator that drew Democrats’ attention in the first place — Sen. John Kerry’s narrow 2004 loss in the 3rd district — has swung Democrat: Obama leads McCain by 2 percentage points.

Meanwhile, the 3rd district moves up a few notches on Real Clear Politics’ rankings of the nation’s 50 most competitive House races, from No. 40 on Sept. 19 to No. 35 today.