A look at the MPR poll

Posted at 3:00 AM on November 1, 2006 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)

You'll note that the time stamp on this post is 3 a.m. Rest assured, I'm not actually working at 3 a.m., but the MPR poll story on the governor's race is embargoed. I'm actually writing this at 3 p.m. on Tuesday after working on setting up the poll results on the aforementioned page and trying to make sense of these numbers.

They don't make sense. And the reason they don't make sense is the governor's race, as near as I can tell, is defying the usual things I look at in elections.

I'm not a statistics expert, I'm not a political scientist. I'm so unschooled that I have always thought that the popular candidate will win out over the less popular one and that incumbency matters.

That's so yesterday, apparently.

As I've posted here before, my usual antennae do not detect a big problem for Pawlenty. And yet the polls keep showing that he's got a problem and every person I know -- who knows -- says Pawlenty is afraid he's going to lose this election, and he might.

But I'm not sure it's going to be his fault.

The more I look at these numbers, the more I think that if the numbers are right, Pawlenty's caught in some sort of whirlpool that isn't entirely of his doing. Maybe it's an anti-Republican thing. Maybe it's an anti-Iraq thing. What it doesn't necessarily appear to be is an anti-Pawlenty thing.

Check out the job approval ratings that I could dig up from past MPR polls. The percentage indicates the number of people who say he's doing either a good or excellent job as governor.

There's not a huge swing there, and most of it seems to reflect the state budget "crisis."

His numbers now, however, aren't far from the worst numbers Ventura racked in the middle of his term. He was hanging around 52% in February 2000 with a low of 43% shortly before that.

Now let's look at the current poll. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed said Pawlenty is doing a "good" or "excellent" job as governor. That's up 1% from the last survey (statistically insignificant, I guess). But only 42% say they'd vote for him.

Where did that 5% go? Moreover, what does it mean that 5% of the voters won't vote for you, even if they think you're doing a good job. How do you run on that?

The other thing about this poll is that Pawlenty's favorables went up 2% in this survey over a month ago, while Hatch's went up 5%. Peter Hutchinson's went up 2%. Relatively even.

The "unfavorables", however, went up 9% for Hatch, and went up only 4% for Pawlenty. They went up 12% for Hutchinson.

The "neutrals" went down 13% for Hatch, 16% for Pawlenty and went up 4% for Hutchinson.

Hatch's previous "neutrals" went mostly to the "unfavorables." Pawlenty's previous "neutrals" were mostly split between "favorables" and "unfavorables" . But a whole chunk of the former "neutrals" seems to have disappeared -- at least to this untrained eye.

Peter Hutchinson, meanwhile, got a lot of voters to recognize his name, but too many of them decided they didn't like him ... at least based on favorables.

So what does all of this mean?

It means Tim Pawlenty doesn't have Tim Penny to help him get elected this year. Penny pulled 16% of the vote four years ago.

Peter Hutchinson is pulling 4% right now.

It's a two-person race and that apparently is not a good sign for Pawlenty.

Comments (8)

I'm with you, Bob. I can't figure out what's going on. I thought Pawlenty would run away with this race.

Perhaps it has something to do with property taxes. It's a complicated thing to understand, but I think the opposition has done a pretty good job of making it simple for people: Pawlenty cut local government aid, so your property taxes went up.

A lot of people in the metro (I don't know about greater MN) are really upset about their property taxes. At some gut level they understand that this is not a fair tax. It's defintely hit me and I make a pretty good salary.

Health care is likely another factor. People know they're paying a lot more and they probably know someone who was cut off the Minnesota Care rolls by Pawlenty.

Pawlenty really doesn't have anything to distinguish his first term. What did he accomplish? I give him credit for drug reimportation but it seems people have forgotten about that. Other than that issue, the only thing he can run on is "no new taxes." That dog doesn't have legs anymore. People are sick of it. They want services, not a few extras bucks in their pocket and a lot more than a few extra bucks in the pockets of the rich.

I don't think national politics is playing into this. I haven't seen a lot of ads linking Pawlenty to Bush, for example. Maybe I've just missed them.

My sense is that this race is soming down to two issues: health care and fair taxation. Pawlenty loses on both. I'm starting to think the incumbancy advantage is the only thing keeping this race even.

Posted by David Greene | November 1, 2006 9:26 AM

That makes sense, but look at the issues and compare them to last time.

I don't have my scrawlings with me -- I'm at my kitchen table at the moment and they're in my cube -- but "Taxes and Budget" dropped as the top issue from something like 36% to 29%. It's still the top item, you're right, but more people jumped to other issues.

What other issues? Health care? It dropped to 8% from 9% and fell one spot, replaced by '''Family values".

Economy and jobs, however, went to the 3rd spot and went to 11%. But even there, there's at least an argument to be made that the stock market is at record levels, jobs have rebounded etc.

It's the old problem of the economy being good -- as defined -- but people not feeling it is, I guess.

One thing I know....nothing about Tuesday is going to surprise me in this race. It's that untrackable.

Posted by Bob Collins | November 1, 2006 9:34 AM

Seems to me the decision is style vs substance. Obviously style goes a long way... if you're doing well. But if not...

Posted by Joel Gingery | November 1, 2006 10:03 AM

This is what I don't understand about the whole LGA, property tax thing.

Are the people who are upset with Pawlenty saying they would've been happy if Pawlenty had raised their state taxes by the same amount?

Posted by Jeff | November 1, 2006 10:58 AM

I don't think it's an LGA thing, Jeff. I think where Hatch has scored points is when he's emphasized the increase in fees and fines etc., and that the taxes --which are deductible -- have just been replaced by expenses which are not.

Larry Pogemiller has spent 3+ years trying to make the LGA argument and it hasn't worked; perhaps because he tries to explain it to wonkily (is that a word).

Jesse Ventura was good at this. He'd say, "you know, it sucks that I have to pay $200 to register my car every year". And then people nod in agreement because... well... it does. Although he probably could've dropped the "my Porsche" part of the explanation.

I think it gets back to the economy situation where people might see thenumbers and they might hear the words that the economy is good, but they don't "feel" it is.

One of the problems with the tax-cut issue is that the tax cuts were to try to get us out of a deficit. There was no way anybody was going to FEEL those tax cuts sinc ethe money 'saved" didn't go to the taxpayers, it went to reducing the deficit. So the only thing people could actually FEEL, was the other stuff...the increase in fees, and other taxes.

Now, it's true, they MIGHT have felt worse if the taxes had been raised, but that doesn't really matter. It only matters if they feel worse than they did.... not worse than they might have.

Posted by Bob Collins | November 1, 2006 11:40 AM

I think you hit it with the initial analysis, that being that Tim Penny took more votes from Moe than Hutchinson is taking from Hatch. I suspect that Pawlenty found his ceiling of support in the last election, and the 3rd party influence won't be strong enough this year to give him the victory.

Posted by bsimon | November 1, 2006 12:02 PM

Bob, good point about jobs. The problem with the "great" stock numbers and unemployment rate is that the new jopbs are not quality jobs. They are minimum wage jobs. So those economic numbers are deceiving. It's similar to the statistics that show wages are going up. The average is only going up due to enormous pacakges for CEOs and other top executives. If one looks at the middle class, real wages are going down.

People may not know the details, but they feel it every month when bills are due.

So I think you're right that people aren't feeling the economic "boost." They're not feeling it because they aren't benefiting from it.

In a lot of ways, we're in a new Gilded Age.

Jeff, the key to understanding the LGA issue is that property taxes, which fund most of local government, are extremely regressive. They're probably the most regressive tax we have. It makes no account for ability to pay. Thus you hear stories about seniors on fixed incomes losing their houses due to rises in property taxes.

It IS better to raise the money with a state tax for several reasons. First, the tax is spread out over a much larger population, so each person pays less than they would for local taxes. It's similar to the theory of insurance. Pool lots of people together to mitigate risks and expenses.

(On a side note, this is why Heath Savings Accounts are a very bad idea. They reduce the size of the insurance pool, making it more expensive for everyone.)

Second, state taxes are generally more progressive. An income tax increase to cover budget shortfalls is a much better solution than a property tax, because it's based on ability to pay. Right now, if you look at combined state and local taxes, the richest Minnesotans pay the lowest percentage of their income in taxes. The poor pay the second lowest and the middle class pays the highest. This has grown worse under Pawlenty due to the shift to local property taxes. This doesn't count fees, which would only skew the numbers even more in the unfair direction.

People are feeling this even if they can't put their finger on exactly what it is. If people understood the workins of all this in more detail (basically, if they were aware of the arguments I've just laid out), I think Pawlenty would be further behind Hatch.

Posted by David Greene | November 1, 2006 1:45 PM

I think the reason Hutchinson's negatives are higher than his positives are due to his commercials.

First we've got Jesse Ventura doing his familiar schtick about career politicians without even mentioning Hutchinson. Then Hutchinson follows it up with an ad of him walking into a diner, throwing water into someone's face, and saying, "Wake up, you zombie! You should vote for me because I'm for education and health care and the environment and other good stuff!" What the hell is he thinking?

And let's not even get into Indie the Buffalo...

Posted by Chris | November 1, 2006 8:03 PM

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