| It has been an extremely busy week so far, both here on MPP and out in the real only-somewhat-political world. So I'm a few days late to the party, but I've been looking at the results of the Republican Party's gubernatorial straw poll, and I think there are some interesting items of note. And I said to myself "self! You haven't written too much about the GOP field yet." So here are the final numbers from that straw poll:
First, a word about these numbers. Poll participants were asked to rank their first and second choices, so the first two percentage columns mean slightly different things. The First Choice percentage is the raw percentage of participants who picked a given candidate. The Second Choice percentage is the percentage of participants who didn't pick the candidate as their first choice and did pick the candidate as their second choice. The difference is subtle -- David Hann's raw 216 second choice votes translate to a lower 20% than Marty Seifert's 171 (22%) because Seifert got a lot more first place votes. Et cetera.
1st Choice + 2nd Choice is the raw percentage of people who voted for the candidate in either position.
So now that the numbers are explained, what do we see?
1. Marty Seifert is in the driver's seat
The House Minority Leader is well known among the state party's activist base, and his ability to turn press conferences and releases into name recognition has served him well. However, when one is at the top, that means there are plenty of opponents looking to knock one off the pedestal.
2. The party's conservative base is split right now between Tom Emmer and Pat Anderson
State Rep. Emmer and former State Auditor Anderson are both well-known enough to garner significant support, but both are targeting the same intraparty demographics. If at any point one of these two candidates pulls away and unites the 37-39% who are supporting one of them, that could be a pretty effective counterweight to Seifert's superior name recognition.
3. David Hann's stock is priced to sell
Part of me wants a chance to see what my local DFL can do with an open-seat race in SD42. Another part thinks the seat is out of reach of Hann is nominated anyway, and yet another wants to take the guy on directly. In any case, Hann is surprisingly strong on the second choice ballots for a State Senator who's been around for a while but hasn't been a major figurehead for big policy initiatives or base-rallying political moves.
4. The rest look like also-rans
That "No Votes" and "Other" came in around the same point as Paul Kohls in "fifth" place means the rest of these candidates are not likely to have a huge impact on the GOP endorsement race. Too bad, Jungbauer sounds like he's a hoot of an interview.
All in all, there are some interesting results here. And although it's just a straw poll, the population of the poll happens to be the most engaged activists on that side of the aisle -- those most likely to become delegates to their state convention. Given some good organization, a few teabagger parties here and there, and a little luck, a lot of things could happen with those top four candidates. But right now, it looks like those four are the only game in town. |
