MN-01: SurveyUSA: Walz in trouble?

[Rowan]

No results until 6 PM local time, but:

"SurveyUSA/1st Dist poll results tonight at 6 p.m. The poll is good news/bad news for GOP. Demmer and Walz close. Emmer underperforms in 1st."

http://twitter.com/5hauser/status/27472969094

[Meeker]

I'd suspected for a while that this one might be competitive.

[Sam Spade]

I'd suspected for a while that this one might be competitive.

As well you should have...

[JohnnyLongtorso]

Are we factoring in the usual Republican lean in SUSA's Minnesota polling?

[JohnnyLongtorso]

It's Walz by 5:

Tim Walz (D) - 47
Randy Demmer (R) - 42
Steven Wilson (IP) - 4
Lars Johnson (I) - 2

Lars Johnson wins the "most Minnesotan name" vote.

[Meeker]

That's not too bad.

[Sam Spade]

SUSA's GOP Lean is in the statewide polling, not in the House polling, oddly enough, at least historically

[JohnnyLongtorso]

SUSA's GOP Lean is in the statewide polling, not in the House polling, oddly enough, at least historically

I'm not even going to attempt to wrap my brain around that one.

[Sam Spade]

SUSA's GOP Lean is in the statewide polling, not in the House polling, oddly enough, at least historically

I'm not even going to attempt to wrap my brain around that one.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but go look at the results - SUSA nailed MN-06 in both 2006 (said 49-42 Bachmann, final result 50-42 Bachmann) and 2008 (said 46-45 Bachmann, final result 46-43 Bachmann), nailed MN-03 in 2008 (said 46-41 Paulsen, final result 49-41 Paulsen), nailed MN-02 in 2006 (54-36 Kline, final result 56-40 Kline)

The only one outside MOE was MN-05 in 2006 (said 49-24-22 Ellison, final result 56-21-21 Ellison), and that's not really that bad for House polling in my book.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So SUSA is good at polling the suburbs. The theories as to their GOP lean include that they might have a hard time dealing with same day registration or rural Democrats. Neither of which really apply in the suburbs where people tend to not be too mobile. The MN-5 poll wasn't that bad, but is off by about as much as their statewide polls often are. This seat has a lot of small cities where people are quite mobile as well as rural Democrats.

That said, this doesn't surprise me. The seat is too polarized for someone who voted for ObamaCare, the stimulus and all that to win in a landslide. Demmer isn't a good fit for it or a good candidate either, he's just too extreme similar to the gubernatorial candidate who has a very similar name, but the fact that he's not a total joke kind of guarantees him a floor of what he's getting in this poll. Which isn't really that high still. I still don't see him winning though unless he can make serious inroads into my old home of the Mankato area which Walz pretty thoroughly owns, as well as that area I think of as the "meth and strippers" belt and win historical GOP margins in Rochester. I'd be surprised if Walz loses, but if he did it'd probably be the hardest loss of the night for me (probably even worse than Feingold), since it would put a huge damper on my fondest memory of 2006.

[minionofmidas]

This was always a "very likely to get close, rather unlikely to flip" district for this year.

[ilikeverin]

Lars Johnson wins the "most Minnesotan name" vote.

Lars Anderson*.