Rasmussen: Senate race tight

Posted at 12:05 PM on May 27, 2008 by Tom Scheck (3 Comments)

Rasmussen Reports has released a Minnesota based poll on the Senate race. GOP Sen. Norm Coleman has a two percentage point lead over Democrat Al Franken. 47% of those polled back Coleman. 45% back Franken. The MOE is +/-4.5 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Democrat Barack Obama has a wider lead over Republican John McCain in Rasmussen's survey of Minnesota voters. 53% of those polled support Obama while 38% back McCain. The MOE is +/-4 percentage points. \

Nationally, Rasmussen's Daily Tracking poll has McCain leading Obama.

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Comments (3)

Does anyone have any idea why Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer wasn't included in this poll? The last I checked, his one-to-one numbers against Coleman had increased dramatically in the few polls that included him. I did a projection, using just that little bit of information available, and I got him approaching Franken numbers at this point. So I am quite surprised that they didn't even ask the question.

Was the poll commissioned by someone who actually didn't want to ask that question?

Posted by Charley Underwood | May 27, 2008 4:32 PM

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I don't know why Nelson-Pallmeyer wasn't included. It looks like Fox9 paid for the poll. Typically a pollster will work with the news outlet on what types of questions they want to ask and then they put the poll in the field.

Here's the fox report:

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/myfox/pages/News/Politics/Detail?contentId=6632497&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.14.1

Posted by Tom Scheck | May 27, 2008 4:40 PM

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Nelson-Pallmeyer was polling roughly the same as Darryl Stanton, whose Senate campaign has received no news coverage whatsoever, in the most recent Survey USA Poll. There's a substantial anti-Norm/anti-GOP vote out there, Charley.

Whether Franken or Nelson-Pallmeyer is better positioned to take advantage of it, I don't know. People always talk about Senate voting records being problematic because there's always something that you can attack someone with. But Franken and JNP are also authors of multiple books, which can function the same way. Heck, most people just judge books by their titles. (Franken: Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and ) (Nelson-Pallmeyer: Jesus Against Christianity and Is Religion Killing Us?) Think there may be some misunderstandings from that?

Be ready to hear lots of out-of-context passages quoted this fall, no matter who the DFL candidate is.

Posted by Chris | May 28, 2008 2:01 AM

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