The MPR Senate poll
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Drat. I was all set to put some nifty charts together to show how this race is going nowhere when I realized that MPR has only done two polls on this race -- one this morning and one a month ago.
I generally don't compare one poll to another, so while you might hear someone hold up an MPR poll and someone hold up, say, a Rasmussen poll and shout, "hey, look at the swing !",well, even I know that's just bad science. Or math. Or... whatever.
Mark Kennedy has pretty much been stuck where he is since I started watching the race with some vigor in January.... somewhere around 39 to 41% in most polls. Now, there are polls showing him closer than the 10% the MPR-Pioneer Press poll shows today. And there are a few showing him further behind than that. But there aren't many I can find that show much movement for any candidate.
This is the first one I've seen that shows some vitality for Kennedy. Kennedy's favorables are up by 6% and he's closed the gap from 15% to 10%. And while I'm tempted to point out that that figure is closer in line with some other recent polls, I recognize that that's just bad math... or science...or whatever.
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One of the glaring items in these numbers -- aside from the fact that Klobuchar has dropped 5 percent -- is that 9-percent of those surveyed who identified themselves as Republicans, say they're likely to vote for Klobuchar. That's down from 14-percent a month ago. Both numbers seem high, compared to previous elections. I don't know if they're right or wrong -- when you break a survey of 625 people down this far, you're likely to get wider swings.
But, think negative ads don't work? Think again. Klobuchar's negatives rose from 19 to 30%, and Kennedy's went from 32 to 45%.
Iraq is still the #1 issue in this race... it's up from 21% to 23% and just doing the armchair quarterbacking here, I'd have to say that everything that Kennedy has done in the last month, it's largely because of "the ad;" the one about Iraq.
So I was surprised the other night to see another ad with Kennedy on someone's porch, talking about the economy. Maybe the poll tells us why. It says the economy is considered "most important" by 9% of those surveyed; up from 5%.
Let's see.... 4% jump in the economy... 2% jump in Iraq...that's 6%...and the gap closes by 5%.
So what's left to gnaw on in the last days of the campaign? Ladies and gentlemen: meet "moral issues/family values." The last time you saw it -- in the poll a month ago -- only 4% thought it "most important." Today, it's 10%. Ten percent!!!
And health care too. It's jumped up by about 4-5%.
None of these increases seems to have come at the expense of any other defined issue. They appear to have come from the "other" category a month ago. Apparently people have decided "other" isn't that important anymore.
Next Tuesday, we'll find out what is.
How's that for a lame "the future remains to be seen" ending to a post?
