Dean Barkley

Barack Obama holds a 49-46 lead over John McCain in Minnesota, according to a new poll conducted by SurveyUSA. That’s within the survey’s 3.9 percent margin of error. No other poll released in recent weeks has shown the presidential contest to be that tight in Minnesota. In fact 7 of the last 10 surveys in [...]

Al Franken has a slight lead in the U.S. Senate race, according to two polls released today. The Minnesota Public Radio/Humphrey Institute survey shows Franken opening up a 41-38 edge over Norm Coleman, with Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley picking up support from 17 percent of those surveyed. Public Policy Polling, meanwhile, has it 45-40 [...]

Sen. Norm Coleman holds a six-point lead over Al Franken, according to a Mason-Dixon poll released today. The incumbent garnered support from 42 percent of respondents, compared to 36 percent for Franken. Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley trailed with 12 percent. The poll, commissioned by NBC, had a four-point margin of error.
A Rasmussen Reports [...]

Sen. Norm Coleman leads Al Franken by a 43-39 percent margin, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll. Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley garnered support from 14 percent of those surveyed. The Republican’s lead is within the poll’s 4.5 percent margin of error. In two previous polls this month, Rasmussen found Franken to have leads [...]

On today’s Star Tribune cover Patricia Lopez makes a case that Minnesota voters who don’t intend to vote a straight party line at the top of the ballot could play a critical role in the outcome of the state’s U.S. Senate race. If that sounds familiar it’s because the Strib printed essentially the same story two years ago about voters who backed Democrat Amy Klobuchar for U.S. Senate and Republican Tim Pawlenty for governor. The difference is that in 2006 the poll numbers justified the fuss.

Minnesota’s Senate contest is the only remaining toss-up in the country, according to the latest rankings from the Rothenberg Political Report. Yesterday’s conviction of Sen. Ted Stevens was sufficient to bump his seat over to “lean takeover,” leaving Norm Coleman all alone among incumbents in the toss-up realm. The latest composite of polls from Real [...]

Newspaper election endorsements are out — some packing a wallop as bracing as a stiff winter wind in October, others playing it as safe as pre-Halloween trick-or-treating at a local strip mall. Here’s a roundup of candidate preferences for the U.S. Senate and House that Minnesota papers have so far put in print. The recession sees the major dailies’ editorialists cutting back on costly opinions — either picking favorites without naming the issues they like them for, as both the PiPress and Star Tribune have done in the U.S. Senate race, or beating a wholesale retreat from making a pick at all, as the St. Paul Pioneer Press has done in the presidential contest.

Writing at TNR’s The Plank, Jason Zengerle picks up on an interesting fact of recent senate elections in Minnesota:

Here’s a weird bit of trivia. If Al Franken winds up beating Norm Coleman (and he’s now got a small lead in most polls), he’ll be the fourth consecutive Jewish person elected to that Senate seat, after [...]

In politics as in the intensive care unit, a flat line is usually a sign that something bad is happening. At the moment, however, I’m looking at the essentially flat — actually slightly declining — arc of Al Franken’s polling performance in the Minnesota US Senate race, and that line describes a very different story: the transformation of Franken from also-ran to frontrunner without ever budging more than a couple of points in poll standings.

How did this happen?

Tonight at 8 on Twin Cities Public Television, reporter Mary Lahammer files “3 Big Moments,” a half-hour profile of US Senate candidates Dean Barkley, Al Franken and Sen. Norm Coleman. The subject of the Barbara Walters-style interviews with the pols and their families is not issues or the back-and-forth of the long campaign, but three [...]