Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak leads Hennepin County Commissioner
Peter McLaughlin by the same margin he won the primary election,
although one in five likely voters remains undecided, according to a
poll released late Sunday.
R.T. needs to be above 50 percent now- in Pol Sci 101 you
learn that undecideds will break with the challenger, IF they vote.
According to the University of Minnesota poll, 44 percent of likely
voters said they would vote for Rybak while 35 percent would vote
for McLaughlin.
Sly Di's polling rule of thumb: If the margin between the
candidates is less than the margin of error plus 1% for each day
between the poll and the election, the race is competitive. This race
is within the margin of error and the polls don't even open for a
week yet.
"The race is more open than I thought. A fifth of the voters haven't
made up their mind. Usually that's because they have doubts about
the incumbent," said Larry Jacobs, director of the Humphrey
Institute's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the
university.
Well said!
Rybak expressed satisfaction with the poll while McLaughlin said he
hadn't seen it, but knew enough about it to dismiss it.
Trying to put a happy face on it?
McLaughlin said the sample of 371 likely voters was too small, in
his judgment, to provide meaningful results.
Peter is correct, especially in a low turn out election where
maybe half those "likely voters" will actually vote.
But the poll showed that only 27 percent of the city's likely voters
are union members. Of those, 33 percent said they would vote for
Rybak while 49 percent would vote for McLaughlin and 18 percent were
undecided.
Clearly the endorsement has given Peter a 20 point advantage
among this demographic.
"It's a stark picture of how far labor has fallen," Jacobs said.
"The traditional DFL coalition is no longer a powerhouse in
Minneapolis."
Actually it's more a reflection of the number of living wage
union jobs we've lost in Minneapolis on R.T.'s watch.
The survey was conducted for the institute's 2005 Elections Project
by the University of Connecticut. Some 884 adults were polled by
telephone from Oct. 17-29, producing a sample of 371 likely voters.
The poll has a margin of error of 5.1 percentage points.
Wish they would have surveyed a bigger sample- with that big
a MOE in a low turnout off year election the predictive validity of
the survey is pretty compromised. But none the less it's still not
good news for R.T. Looks like the Strib is doing a "Minnesota Poll"
on this race, taken together that may give us a more valid result,
assuming they weren't calling from the same list. BTW, the Stribs
polling firm needs to train they're surveyors better- I had to
explain to him how to do the interview!
handicappin' 'em from Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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