The poll asked, “How important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance?”

Seventy-two percent of Republicans, 71 percent of Independents and 86 percent of Democrats polled said they felt the choice of both was important. But, 46 percent of those polled also said they were concerned that health care reform would limit access to doctors.

When the respondents were read a description of President Obama’s health care reform plan, 51 percent said they supported it and 79 percent of those said they strongly favored it. Forty-three percent opposed Obama’s health care reform plan.

The poll also asked respondents if they had health insurance. Eighty-five percent said they currently had health insurance, with Republicans reporting the highest rates, 88 percent versus 85 percent for Democrats and Independents. Almost a third (31 percent) were already covered under “public options” such as Medicare, Medicaid or the military’s Tricare.

The SurveyUSA results are comparable to other polls asking similar questions.

A July 30 New York Times/CBS poll found that 66 percent support the public option as a choice alongside private insurance.

And a June poll by NBC and the Wall Street Journal that was worded identically to the SurveyUSA poll found 76 percent supporting a choice between a public and private option.

The survey of 500 residents also gauged support for a $1 billion tax bill that was passed by the DFL-controlled legislature last week, but vetoed by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty.  Roughly half (48 percent) of respondents expressed support for an override of the Governor’s veto, while 44 percent opposed an override.

In SurveyUSA’s most recent poll looking at Pawlenty’s popularity, 46 percent expressed approval of the job he is doing, while 50 percent indicated disapproval.

Not surprisingly the numbers vary dramatically by party affiliation. Nearly 90 percent of Democrats expressed satisfaction with Obama’s job performance, while just 30 percent of Republicans felt similarly. Independents were split down the middle, with 51 percent expressing approval of the president’s performance.

The poll surveyed 600 Minnesota residents and was conducted between March 20-22.

A recent Zogby International poll, by contrast, found that Obama’s approval rating had slipped to roughly 50 percent nationwide.

That 62 percent remains steady from January, which is a bit of an anomaly. From Smart Politics: “In Minnesota, however, approval of Obama’s performance fell by only 2 points during the past month – from 64 to 62 percent – the smallest drop for Obama in any of the 14 states polled by SurveyUSA.”

Obama had the support of Democrats (89 percent) and Independents (57 percent), while Republicans overwhelmingly opposed him with only 28 percent approval. The Twin Cities area showed the least support at 57 percent, with southern Minnesota showing overwhelming support at 75 percent. Western Minnesota and the northeast part of the state gave him 63 percent and 67 percent respectively.

The poll of 500 respondents, conducted Wednesday, found 49 percent wanted a combination of tax increases and budget cuts, while only 41 percent wanted just budget cuts and 4 percent only tax increases. Interestingly, 48 percent of Republicans approved of the combined strategy.

A majority, 53 percent, said that the wealthy should shoulder the burden, and only 12 percent thought there should be lower taxes on the wealthy.

Poll respondents overwhelmingly rejected a sales tax on food and clothing (81 percent) and also rejected public funding for a Vikings stadium (75 percent).

SurveyUSA found nearly identical results in a poll released last night. The survey, commissioned by KSTP (Channel 5) gauged Tinklenberg’s support at 47 percent and Bachmann’s at 44 percent. SurveyUSA tapped 700 registered voters and the poll had a +/- 4.0 margin of error

Both narrow leads for the Democrat are statistically insignificant. But the polls confirm the widespread assumption that Bachmann’s recent “anti-American” gaffe, coupled with Tinklenberg’s dramatic uptick in fundraising, has fundamentally altered the race. Just a week ago the incumbent was widely assumed to be cruising to re-election.

Perhaps tellingly the “In the News” feature on Bachmann’s web site, which trumpets an 11-point polling lead for the Republican, has not been updated since prior to her Hardball blowup.

Survey USA cautions that the poll is a snapshot from a volatile race that – with Tinklenberg’s lead within the margin of error — appears to be essentially tied. Indeed, the contest continues to develop as a national story on the news of Bachmann’s Oct. 19 remarks on MSNBC’s “Hardball” show. (On Friday MPR will release results from its own poll of 6th District voters’ current take on the race.) The day before Bachmann told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama and possibly others in Congress held “anti-American” views, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released results of a survey taken Oct. 10–12 showing Bachmann with a narrow 42–38 lead.

In the poll released Thursday, women preferred Tinklenberg to Bachmann by a wider margin (53 percent to 41 percent) than men favored Bachmann over Tinklenberg (48–42). Tinklenberg takes 51 percent of independent voters to Bachmann’s 35 percent. And the DFLer gets the support of more Democrats (87 percent) than Bachmann does Republicans (79 percent).

That last figure demonstrates that Republican support for Bachmann has dropped by 9 percentage points from where it stood two years ago, as reported in a poll that Survey USA took for KSTP-TV on Oct. 24–26, 2006, just days before Bachmann won election to her first term in Congress.

Major media are reporting that Survey USA conducted this week’s poll on Monday and Tuesday, but that’s incorrect. It turns out it was actually Tuesday and Wednesday, meaning that some respondents gave pollsters their voting preference when the controversy over Bachmann’s “anti-American” statements and re-statements had had yet another 24-hour news cycle in which to curdle.

The problem: Survey USA’s original report listed two different date ranges (Oct. 20–21 and Oct. 21–22) as the period over which the poll was conducted. Jay Leve, an official at the polling organization, issued this clarification early Friday in response to a Minnesota Independent query:

SurveyUSA apologizes for the confusion. Data collected 10/21/08 + 10/22/08. Poll released 10/23/08. The incorrect reference has been changed.

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.