Minnesota has the third lowest number of residents lacking health insurance coverage, according to a survey by Gallup. The state ranks below Massachusetts and Vermont, two New England states that have instituted universal health care insurance programs. According to the survey, 9.4 percent of Minnesotans lack health insurance.

Massachusetts topped the list of states with the lowest number of uninsured at 5.3 percent. In 2006, the state instituted a mandate requiring residents to carry health insurance. Vermont has the second lowest uninsured rate at 9.2 percent. Vermont recently enacted the nation’s first single-payer health care system.

Rounding out the top 10 were Connecticut, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware.

Despite the strong showing in the state-based rankings, Minnesota’s rate of uninsured has climbed over the last few years from 8.7 percent in 2009.

Minnesota also placed third in 2010 and 2009, according to Gallup. The Midwest and Northeast have historically had low uninsured rates.

The bottom ten were all southern states, except for California and Alaska. Texas had the highest percent of uninsured with 27.4 percent followed by Mississippi, Alaska, Florida, Oklahoma, California, Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina and Georgia. Texas has consistently led the nation in having the highest percentage of its population without health insurance in the Gallup survey.

A nationwide poll conducted following the entrance of Texas Gov. Rick Perry into the presidential race knocked Mitt Romney from the top spot and pushed back against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s inertia.

The Gallup poll was conducted with Republican-leaning voters between Aug. 17-21. It has a margin of error of +/- 4 percent.

The poll results, which were released Wednesday, probably come as a surprise to the Romney campaign. Romney bested a then-unofficial Perry run in Gallup polls as recent as last month, where Perry garnered only 18 percent support. But Perry also performed well in a recent Rasmussen survey.

Much of Perry’s support comes from his deep backing in the south, where he garnered 39 percent support, according to the Gallup poll. The poll results also suggest that Perry could have room to grow — his name is only recognized by 67 percent of likely Republican voters.

The poll results could signal danger for Bachmann, who dropped three points in the last month. She had earlier overtaken Romney in Iowa and was rising in national polls in the run-up to her win of the Iowa Straw Poll. Bachmann’s also slipped in recent Iowa polls since Perry officially announced his candidacy.

Perry’s official entrance into the race appears to have eaten into Bachmann’s conservative base: She lost about 10 percent of conservative supporters since the July poll.

The contest now heads into September debates where frontrunners like Perry can expect to be again tested.

According to a Gallup survey of 170,000 adults nationwide, Minnesota ranks 13th in the nation for Democratic advantage just behind New Jersey and ahead of Washington state. Minnesota dipped sharply in 2010 in Democratic advantage only to rebound a bit in 2011.

According to Gallup, Minnesota currently has a 9-point Democratic advantage. Forty-seven percent of Minnesota respondents identified as Democrats or leaning towards the Democratic Party while 38 percent are Republicans or lean Republican. That’s down from a high of 15 advantage points in 2008 for Democrats and 12 points in 2009, but an improvement from a low of four points in 2010.

That gap in 2010 was similar for many states, but Minnesota appears to have rebounded more quickly than others.

Minnesota is the only Midwestern state in the top 15 outside of reliably Democratic Illinois.

Gallup’s poll only shows a snapshot of where adults surveyed in the state stand during the poll’s timeframe, January through June 2011, and says other factors may influence voters.

“The party affiliation estimates are based on the entire state adult population, and do not necessarily reflect each party’s electoral strength within a state,” the pollster said. “A state’s voting electorate may be tilted slightly more to one party than the basic affiliation figures due to differences in turnout between Republicans and Democrats in the state and perhaps the strength of the respective party organizations in the state.”

Listed as most strongly Democratic: the District of Columbia (with 78 percent of respondents identifying as Dems compared to 10 percent who consider themselves GOPers), Hawaii (52 to 28) and Maryland (54 to 33). The top state for Republicans is Utah, where 58 percent identified as Republicans and 27 percent identified as Democrats.

Presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has increased her share of likely Republican support to about 18 percent, according to a nationwide poll released today.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney maintains his lead, according to the poll, with 27 percent support. But Bachmann has fought her way to second place in the polls, despite a number of missteps and public controversies, including criticisms of the clinic run by Bachmann’s husband and leaks to a conservative website that Bachmann suffered from debilitating migraines.

It was just last month that Bachmann was stagnant at 7 percent in the Gallup poll. But it appears that recent gains in Iowa, where she’s taken a small lead in polls, have helped her profile nationwide.

The entrance of a number of other candidates like Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin could eat into Bachmann’s support.

University of Iowa Professor Tim Hagle told the Minnesota Independent earlier this month that Palin’s entrance to the race doesn’t necessarily hurt Bachmann worse than it does other candidates because many of the Republican candidates are trying to pull from that same tea party base of support. The data from the poll seems to confirm Hagle’s observation, as a Palin run would hurt Bachmann’s campaign less than a Perry run.

The Gallup poll has a margin of error of four points and was conducted with 1,000 likely Republican voters between July 20-24.

A Gallup poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents released Tuesday found that Rep. Michele Bachmann bests Tim Pawlenty in name recognition and that the congresswoman has a much higher “positive intensity” than the former Minnesota governor. Still, Minnesota’s two Republican presidential hopefuls remain in the middle of the pack among Republican candidates.

Bachmann has the second highest net favorable rating — or “positive intensity” — among Republicans, at 20 percent. Herman Cain leads, with 25 percent. Pawlenty is fourth with 15 percent. The favorability rating is only measured among those voters who recognize the name of the candidate.

Bachmann also beat Pawlenty in name recognition. Sixty percent of Republicans knew of Bachmann, while 50 percent knew of Pawlenty. Pawlenty has increased his name recognition by 10 percent since a similar survey in March. Bachmann has increased hers by 6 percent.

Both Bachmann and Pawlenty trail Sarah Palin, who enjoys nearly universal name recognition, at 95 percent, as well as Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, who all have name recognition above 70 percent.

Pawlenty formally announced his candidacy for the 2012 Republican nomination in May, while Bachmann gave hints last weekend on Iowa public radio that God is pointing her in the direction of seeking that nomination herself.

“Well, every decision that I make I pray about, as does my husband and I can tell you, yes, I’ve had that calling and that tugging on my heart that this is the right thing to do, and because it’s such a momentous decision,” she said.

Bachmann and Pawlenty aren’t the first presidential contenders from the same state. Smart Politics notes that when two candidates from the same state are running, half the time one of those candidates ends up with the nomination.

A new Gallup poll of potential 2012 Republican nominees for the White House shows Minnesota’s two contenders, Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Michele Bachmann, in the low single digits among Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Bachmann ranked sixth in the poll with Pawlenty just behind her at seventh.

Bachmann garnered 4 percent and Pawlenty got 3 percent in the poll released on Wednesday. They placed behind Mike Huckabee who received 18 percent, and Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin who each got 16 percent. Trailing were Newt Gingrich with 9 percent and Ron Paul with 5.

Gallup also looked at performance across its past three presidential polls. Bachmann hadn’t indicated an interest in the presidency until January, so the pollster only had one data set for her.

Pawlenty, however, has hovered between 3 percent and 4 percent since last September.

“As is usually the case in early nomination polls, the top candidates tend to be the best known. Huckabee, Romney, and Ron Paul all sought the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Palin was the party’s vice presidential nominee that year, and Gingrich was the speaker of the House from 1995-1999,” Gallup said. “So far, none of the lesser-known candidates, including some current and former state governors, has broken out of the low single digits.”

Another Gallup poll, out this morning, shows that 41 percent of those surveyed think low-income Americans are paying their fair share of taxes. That figure is up from last year, when 32 percent of respondents thought poor people were paying the right amount. Thirty-nine percent of those surveyed think lower-income Americans are paying too much in taxes: last year, 51 percent of Americans felt that way.