CD6: Bachmann 46, Tinklenberg 45, Anderson 6
CD3: Paulsen 46, Madia 41, Dillon 10
Sen: Coleman 44, Franken 39, Barkley 16
Pres: Obama 49, McCain 46, Other 3
Regular MNpublius readers have seen a lot of polls and SUSA has always been the right-wing outlier. One reason is that SurveyUSA only polls people it knows are likely voters. The problem with that, is that in 2004 for example, over 20% of the electorate voted with the same day registration process. If there is a remotely similar situation this Tuesday, be mindful that SUSA would have not polled any of those people.
Another way to look at this is to compare KSTP/SUSA to other polls. Here’s FiveThirtyEight’s breakdown of recent polls on the presidential race in Minnesota:
So when Survey USA and KSTP say that Obama is only leading by 3, how far off might their polling for Senate, CD3 and CD6?
If you’re interested, dig into the crosstabs: CD3, CD6, Senate, President. Normally I consider the crosstabs are worthy of further analysis but I don’t feel like bothering digging into a throwaway poll.
UPDATE: Paul Demko at Minnesota Independent points to Nate Silver of The Plank and FiveThirtyEight:
Don’t worry too much about that SurveyUSA result in Minnesota, which shows Obama just 3 points ahead. SurveyUSA’s polling in Minnesota has been very, very weird all year; they’ve never shown Obama with larger than a 6 point lead in their likely voter model, and had McCain ahead in the state as recently as October 1st. SurveyUSA does not have a Republican lean in general, but in Minnesota, it has consistently had a huge one.
Actually, I think this is pretty good news. If you adjust the presidential numbers to reflect what everyone else is showing and the other races move accordingly then we’ll be seeing Sen. Al Franken and Reps Ashwin Madia and El Tinklenberg in Congress in 2009.
SUSA has absolutely SUCKED in Minnesota because of their history of never polling here. Maybe they’ll do better in 2012
Lojasmo,
It is not just Minnesota. On Real Clear Politics, where they showed all the swing states, you would see a swing state with 9 polls favoring Obama, but always SUSA favoring McCain. And that was in several swing state compilations. Alec
In his 3AM post on the latest national and state polls, Nate SIlver on 538.com also pointed out specifically that the SUSA polls in MN have not representative.
53-47 Obama nationally, 55-45 Minnesota. This will be called a mandate.
Looks like they got things right on except for the Coleman/Franken tightness.
Tom:
My sister was an Obama supporter and she didn’t call
the margin a mandate. She thought it was too close to be
a mandate. Especially given that the financial resources
that Obama threw in, the low job rating that Bush had,
the unpopularity of the war, it’s the Republicans fault
we had this fiance mess the margin should’ve been bigger.
There were people who had predicted eight or more senate
seats changing hands, thirty house seats (after all if you
folks were getting a mandate Senator Franken and reps Madia
and Tinkleberg will be eager to support what Obama is doing.
To the rest of you who said USA was really off lets see they
hit the winner on all four and compared with how national firms
were really off with the national margin USA did better
than the national pollsters did.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN