Rep. Michele Bachmann led the pack for the first time in a Zogby poll of Republican primary voters released on Tuesday. Her presidential campaign appeared to get a jolt from last Monday’s successful GOP debate, and the new poll reflects a surge for the congresswoman whose official campaign is a week old.

In the poll, Bachmann got 24 percent of the vote, ahead of Herman Cain and Mitt Romney, who each got 15 percent, the Washington Times reports.

Though Bachmann is well liked among Republican primary voters, they don’t expect her to get the nomination. Only 7 percent predicted she would win, while Romney — who has led most polls — is predicted by 37 percent of GOP voters to win the nomination.

Bachmann’s performance at the first GOP presidential debate was widely considered to have helped her campaign. A Rasmussen poll released last week following the debate showed Bachmann surging to second place with 19 percent. She had previously been polling in the single digits.

Rasmussen released a survey Friday morning that has the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates essentially tied. Mark Dayton leads Republican Tom Emmer by a slim 40-38 percent margin, with Independence Party candidate Tom Horner pulling in 15 percent.

The poll was conducted on Oct. 6, sampling 750 likely Minnesota voters, producing a +/- 4 margin of error. Dayton’s two-point lead is well within the margin of error, so according to the poll, the gubernatorial race is a toss-up with a little less than a month until Election Day.

These results are essentially the same as Rasmussen’s last poll two weeks ago where Emmer held a two-point lead. But surveys on this year’s gubernatorial contest have diverged wildly between different polling firms. Since the conclusion of the primary at the beginning of August, Rasmussen has shown an even race, an outlook backed by KSTP/SurveyUSA.

However, other firms have shown Dayton with a clear edge in the race. Before the primary, Dayton consistently polled ahead of Emmer by a significant margin, and a Minnesota Public Radio/Humphrey Institute poll from a little over a week ago put Dayton up by 11 percent.

TPM’s PollTracker puts Dayton with a 4-percent average lead, but those numbers are likely skewed based on the polar opposite results that firms have reported.

Mark Dayton, Tom Horner, Tom Emmer

A Rasmussen poll released on Friday shows DFLer Mark Dayton expanding his lead over the GOP’s Tom Emmer and IP candidate Tom Horner in the governor’s race. The poll also shows that many Minnesota voters see both Dayton and Emmer as extreme in their views and that both have high unfavorable ratings. Forty-five percent of voters preferred Dayton, while Emmer got 36 percent and Horner 10 percent, with 10 percent undecided.

Just under half of those surveyed, 48 percent, said that Dayton held mainstream views while 42 percent said his views were extreme. Forty-one percent said Emmer’s views are mainstream while 40 percent said they were extreme. Horner’s views were rated mainstream by 43 percent of those polled, and 22 percent thought they were extreme.

Only 13 percent of those polled had a “very favorable” impression of Emmer, while 27 percent rated him very unfavorably. Dayton got a 24 percent favorable rating and a 28 percent very unfavorable rating.

Few had much of an opinion of Horner; he rated 3 percent very favorable and 8 percent very unfavorable.

Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar both saw positive approval ratings from Minnesotans in a poll released by Rasmussen on Friday. Also in the poll results: 49 percent of respondents said Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s presidential aspirations have affected his performance as governor.

Franken got a 50-percent approval rating in the poll, with 46 percent disapproving. Klobuchar fared even better with 67 percent approving and 30 percent disapproving.

Half of those polled said they would not vote for Pawlenty if he ran for president, and 38 percent said they would. Twenty-nine percent said his potential run for president has had a positive impact on his job performance, while 49 percent said that it has had a negative impact.

Forty-six percent say they would not vote for Pawlenty, and when asked whether his presidential aspirations have impacted his ability to govern, 43 percent say it’s had a negative effect.

Pawlenty’s job approval is at 53 percent — unchanged from the last survey in November.

“It’s absurdly early to be contemplating, let alone polling, the 2012 landscape,” Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant told TPM. “Gov. Pawlenty is focused on balancing Minnesota’s budget, finishing his term strong, and helping elect Republicans in this fall’s elections.”

Photo: MnIndy

A new poll suggests Sen.-elect Al Franken would have trouble following President Barack Obama’s vault from a single Senate-election victory to the White House. Beyond that, it’s not clear why it matters that 44 percent of voters across the country have an unfavorable view of the Democrat or that 34 percent like him at least “somewhat.” According to the pollster, Rasmussen Reports, “It is fairly typical for individual legislators to have negative favorability ratings on a national basis.”

The 22 percent who aren’t sure what they think of Franken and the 40 percent who followed his election saga not very closely or not at all will get a chance to form an opinion in less than two weeks, when the Senate Judiciary Committee takes up the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Senate leaders saved Franken a seat on the committee, where he’s sure to be under the national media microscope.

Rasmussen’s polls within Minnesota have provided interesting peeks at the progress of the battle between Franken and former Sen. Norm Coleman, both before and after Election Day. In late October, Rasmussen reported Coleman leading Franken by a four-point spread that was within the poll’s margin of error. Between two polls taken in December and March, the proportion of Minnesotans who thought Franken won increased by 16 points to a level reaching nearly half the voting population.

By mid-May, Rasmussen put the percentage who wanted Coleman to concede at 54 percent (other polls pegged it at 10 percentage point higher).

Whatever the number, this week they got their wish.

It’s a lower number than the 64 percent or 63 percent favoring a Coleman concession that other polls found last month. Those surveys were conducted, in full or in part, before Coleman filed his latest court appeal.

In Rasmussen’s polls, those predicting Franken’s success have jumped 16 percentage points since March. In December, 67 percent expected Coleman to prevail.

Forty-one percent are opposed to Coleman conceding. But that doesn’t seem likely anyway, as the Republican’s appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court is still pending.

If the justices uphold a lower-court ruling that Franken won, 67 percent of those surveyed want Gov. Tim Pawlenty to issue and sign an election certificate that would let the Senate seat Franken.

Ninety-two percent reported following news about the Senate race “very closely” or “somewhat closely.”

Rasmussen Reports says its survey has a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, with a level of confidence of 95 percent. Questions and responses here.

(Via Polanimal Twitter)

Of these three poll findings, guess which one the Star Tribune covered?

When the numbers were more favorable for Pawlenty, the paper reported it, but when they weren’t, including this week, they left it out (the February poll wasn’t covered at all by the paper). There’s a reasonable explanation, says the Strib’s head politics editor, Doug Tice, who once toiled as a conservative columnist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. So why is Strib coverage selectively citing polls that favor TP?

“It’s not as conspiratorial as all that,” Tice said. “We decided to use the elections figures and Pawlenty’s approvals — good, excellent, fair, poor — and just cut it off at that. We didn’t have a big discussion of it. It was a judgment call to leave it out this time.”

He says sometimes with polls created by external polling firms — ones where the paper doesn’t have “control or know as much about the methodology” — the Strib tries to “keep the story modest.” (As noted above, the Strib did cite this Rasmussen data-point when it skewed Pawlenty’s way last fall.)

“It’s just not so that we use the polls when they’re good for some people and not use them when they’re bad,” he concluded. “If you’re convinced it’s that way, then you won’t believe me, but it isn’t so.”