MN Progressive Project - Campaign Report

A kernel of truth in WSJ/NBC poll

Joe Bodell — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:20:48 GMT

In line with all the conventional wisdom, the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows that there's bad news for the Democrats, good news for the Republicans, etc, etc.

But there's an interesting tidbit a few grafs down in the writeup linked above: how many voters think the GOP will do anything different than they did during the Bush years.

the poll also finds that the Bush attack -- "You cannot have the keys to the car back," as President Obama likes to say. "You drove it into the ditch" -- might not deliver the punch it did in 2006 or 2008. In the survey, 58% believe that Republicans, if they take back control of Congress, will have different ideas than Bush's, versus 35% who think they will return to Bush's policies.

It can't be emphasized enough -- after two election cycles in which virtually all incumbent losses were on the GOP side and virtually none were on the Dem side, virtually all Republicans left in Congress served during the Bush years, enabling that administration's worst excesses, conceits, and unlawful acts. There is still no grand "Contract with America" to tell anyone how today's GOP is any different from yesterday's, last year's, or last decade. These are still culture warriors of the worst sort - those in safe districts who don't really need to care about hurting their fellow Americans in their blind pursuit of power.

Nevertheless, I mentioned that there's probably a kernel of truth in the "I think the GOP would be different than during the Bush years" statement. Today, they'd be a lot more

xenophobic
over the top in favor of their corporate donor base
brazen in their attempts to destroy the Middle Class
willing to villify huge swaths of the American public so they can shut down the federal government and hold hearings about how the President prays

than they ever would have been under President Bush. The list goes on. Hopefully their insanity won't. No holding of breath, however, as we at MPP don't want any lung injuries on our consciences.

Emmer can't have it both ways

Joe Bodell — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:41:02 GMT

Once again, Tom Emmer is up to his old tricks of trying to have his cake and eat it too. This time it's his "jobs" agenda, which is to mean "tax cuts for the super-rich with no discernable economic benefit" agenda. He had a press conference this weekend at Permac Industries, a company that went through some rough times last year as a result of the economic downturn. From a very solid presser from the DFL:

There's just one problem - if Tom Emmer had had his way, there wouldn't be many workers left at Permac Industries.
Permac Industries makes precision-machined parts and experienced significant losses during the economic slowdown, losing 40 percent in sales in 2009. According to news reports, the business owners did not want to lay off their workers, but could not afford to keep them on. That is until they received funding from the federal Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Tom Emmer has vehemently opposed.
With the Recovery Act funding, Permac Industries was able to keep its employees on and actually hire new workers during the economic downturn. Now, their business has recovered and the demand for their parts has returned. But if Tom Emmer had had his way, Permac Industries would not have received the necessary funding, could not have created jobs, and would not be a success story today.

Permac is exactly the kind of company that was hurt badly and almost invisibly by the Great Recession -- they depend on other businesses to purchase their goods and services, and without that constant demand they go under, causing massive job losses.

Emmer, of course, opposed the Recovery Act and all the demand it produced for the products made by Permac and thousands of companies just like it. But now he wants to hold up Permac as an example of what his economic policies would do?

Sorry, Mr. Emmer. You can't have it both ways.

Pollster responsibility?

Joe Bodell — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:47:45 GMT

Should the dollar remain the United States' form of currency?*

Should Congress cut its own pay until the budget is balanced?**

Are you angry at the federal government's policies?***

Are judges in our country too liberal, too conservative, or about right?****

What do these questions have in common? They've all been asked recently during polls by major "reputable" pollsters, and they are each useless, vacuous questions with no value whatsoever to a civil, fact-based political discourse.

Where's the responsibility statement for pollsters in today's day and age?
I'm not talking about horserace polls. Even with a funny methodology like the recent MPR/Humphrey poll is a statement about how the pollster thinks the electorate is going to behave. Research has shown convergence among polls and pollsters and elections approach, as groupthink tends to influence how pollsters approach that question anyway.

What I'm talking about is everything else -- the "opinion" polls that seem to have more to do with agenda-setting than actually taking a public pulse on a given issue. The bottom line is that these so-called "opinion" polls are asking about issues that have facts connected to them, and the polls simply leave that part out of the equation. These polls tell us nothing other than which news sources influence people's opinions and how much they actually know about the issues in play.

This critique is aimed largely at Rasmussen Reports, who has flooded the zone in the 2010 cycle with more than 40% of the election polling nationwide. But in doing so, they have also attempted to push the discourse toward frames that help their Republican patrons, to the detriment of our political discourse. But Rasmussen's not the only one who does these factless opinion asks with an agenda in mind, and the entire practice hurts our country in a very real way. Under no circumstances should a pollster be allowed to get away with asking "Do you think death panels are a good idea?" when the question is based entirely upon a lie perpetrated by Sarah Palin in her efforts to raise her own media profile.

Pollsters, like people, are entitled to their own opinions. They are not, however, entitled to their own facts, nor should they be allowed to ask questions with no airing of the facts of any given matter.

*:Last year Michele Bachmann suggested that some in the federal government sought to replace the dollar with an international currency. Her charges were completely without merit, but were nevertheless picked up by news media around the country and were "polled" by Rasmussen. Surprisingly, 90% said that the dollar should be kept.

**: Members of Congress make around $160,000 per year. Multiply that by 535 Representatives and Senators, and you get $85.6 million. Add Congressional staff to the mix, and you add another $600 million, give or take a few million. You're still talking about less than $700 million, just a drop in the bucket next to the trillion dollars (that's $1,000,000,000,000+) we spend every year on our military and foreign aid budgets. In short, asking this question is stupid -- perhaps cutting one's own pay is a solid symbolic gesture, but does next to nothing to actually close the budget gap.

***: Where's the why? Are you angry because of what the government is doing, or because of what it's not doing? Are our leaders not doing enough, or too much? Are you angry at leaders pushing legislation through, or the obstructionists blocking it? Again, zero value in this question.

****: The vast majority of poll respondents, while eligible voters, have no idea what a liberal justice looks like in comparison to a conservative one. The vast majority of Americans cannot name more than two current Supreme Court justices, let alone identify the liberals or conservatives on the Court. In short, asking this question of people with no reason to know other than what they hear on Fox News tells us absolutely nothing other than that they listen to Fox News.

Red To Blue: Hal Kimball In SD-18 Is Minnesota's Best Bet

TwoPuttTommy — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:34:02 GMT

Here at MPP, we've been following Hal Kimball's bid to replace retiring moderate GOP State Senator Steve Dille, who served for 24 years with distinction. As Joe Bodell noted back in December:

I've said it before and I've said it again -- the DFLers cannot afford to be complacent about the State Senate, where several senior members of the caucus are getting close to retirement age. We need to keep up the pressure and elect great people like Hal to seats just like this one -- and don't be fooled about whether he actually has a shot. He does, and it's a good one. (emphasis added)

Especially with the GOP's decision to endorse Scott Newman for this open seat. Newman's running hard to the far right under the "Personal Responsibility - Individual Freedom - Less Government" banner. For instance, Newman's a guy that wants to get rid of "business subsidies" - as noted by Bluestem Prairie:

4) Do you support the elimination of all business subsidy? Including the subsidy for corn, milk, ethanol, farm property tax, mass transit, construction projects, public service wages, etc. This includes stopping the up-coming 'make jobs' projects likely to be part of the next round of budget talks.
Newman: Yes. It is not the role of government to artificially assist one group of business and not others. I would rather let the market determine whether a business is viable. Remember Reagan's sarcasm; "if it moves tax it. If it stops moving subsidize it". (from Bluestem Prairie)

OK, here's a guy that doesn't like subsidies; yet how does he have any cash in his campaign account going into the final days before November's election?

Why, subsidies!!! According to the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, Newman recently received a state check for $9,301.34. And Newman needs the dough; as noted here at MPP on August 3rd with a quote from Sally Jo at Bluestem Prairie:

The pre-primary reports on file show that Scott Newman, former state legislator and failed judicial candidate, took in $10,514.71, loaned himself $5000, spent $15,052.48 and closed the reporting period with $302.23 in the bank and $4850.00 in debts. (emphasis added)

Which caused Hal's Campaign Manager to note here on MPP:

And although he (Newman) preaches the gospel of no subsidies for anyone including farmers, he has applied for the campaign subsidies that his campaign now desperately needs do to having a tough opponent. Of course he will have to spend half of that subsidy paying off his loan. His parade float is now subsidized by the tax payers.
(emphasis added)

Kimball's campaign sent out a fundraising appeal last week, to make up the difference from what Scott "No Subsidies For YOU!" Newman collected from the state - $9,301.34 - and what Hal collected - $8,566.61. Here's the follow up to it:

SUBJECT: We Made It!
Dear Friends,
Last Thursday I came to you for help in eliminating the $734.73 edge our opponent had in the campaign subsidy department and your response was overwhelming.
In just 48 hours, you helped us raise almost $800!
We're out-raising our opponent, we're out-hustling him, we're covering more important issues and we're knocking on more doors. Now, his only advantage -- a larger government subsidy -- has been totally negated.
Let's send a clear message that Senate District 18 will be represented by a DFLer by raising another $250 by 5 p.m. Monday.
Thanks so much for all your help. I'm humbled and honored to have the best grassroots team in Minnesota!
Hal

Hal has been working his (rear end) off - which is what those who know Kimball would expect from this US Army Veteran.

Again, back in December, Joe Bodell said Kimball had a good shot at winning his race. Today, I'm saying Hal's race is the best bet to turn a Red seat to a Blue Seat.

If you're so inclined, click here to toss Hall a few more bucks, and help turn SD-18 from Red to Blue.

MPR Poll: bad methodology, slim chances for Emmer

Joe Bodell — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:55:10 GMT

MPR is out with a gubernatorial poll with a rather questionable methodology, showing a dead heat between DFLer Mark Dayton and Republican Tom Emmer at 34% apiece.

If it takes an 8-point oversample in Tom Emmer's favor to get him up to a tie, I feel pretty great about Mark Dayton's chances in a real electorate in which younger, cell-phone-only voters show up.

But aside from the weird methodology, check out the published crosstabs:

1. Independent voters:
Undecided: 38%
Horner: 26%
Dayton: 23%
Emmer: 13%

There's a lot of room for movement there, but there is virtually no way Emmer picks up significant enough ground among independent voters to make a dent in the overall results. Keep in mind that this is a mid-term election, and the non-partisan vote is generally going to be a lot lower than it is in presidential years, so given a normal partisan breakdown, or even a slightly GOP-leaning one, Emmer has a LOT of ground to make up.

2. The gender gap: MPR's writeup indicates that there's no significant gender gap -- that women are currently favoring Mark Dayton by a similar margin to men favoring Tom Emmer. However, what they fail to mention directly is that the sample includes 52% women (about normal for Minnesota) which is yet another built-in advantage for Dayton. Again, given a more reasonable partisan sample, this will go straight through to the final results of this election.

3. Age gap? MPR doesn't appear to have published the support breakdowns by age, only the sample sizes -- which look weird in and of themselves, since it's a decent bet the senior vote will be bigger than this poll indicates. If it is, it's another good bet that those voters will go with Dayton in big numbers, especially outside the city -- as we found in the DFL primary, these voters are more likely than not to go with the name they know and trust, and that is Mark Dayton.

Again, if it takes a huge GOP over-sample to get Tom Emmer up to a bare tie, I think Mark Dayton is in pretty darned good shape right now.

Republican operative asks questions, Twin Cities media goes along for ride

Joe Bodell — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:03:36 GMT

At a press conference today, Luke Hellier of Minnesota Democrats Exposed was allowed to ask a "gotcha" question of DFL gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton, and tripped him up a little bit. Bravo, Luke. Glad to see you can read so well from a script that came from...who knows where.

There are some bigger issues here:

1. The real screw-up here is on the part of the organizers, whether that be the Dayton campaign staff, the DFL, or whoever was running the show, in allowing a publicly known Republican blogger, activist, and operative in the room, let alone into a position where he could open his mouth.

2. Pat Kessler asking a follow-on question to something asked by a publicly known Republican operative in such a setting is absolutely preposterous, and truly bends the standards of journalistic decency. Kessler is a good reporter, but this was just absolutely stupid.

3. The money quote from Dayton in the exchange is unlikely to get much play from the likes of MDE:

I just think it's way out of bounds to in terms of what people care about in this election.

People are hurting, and Dayton actually has proposals on the table for helping Minnesota get back on the right track economically (which Emmer does not, beyond "MORE OF WHAT PAWLENTY GAVE US"). So obviously this is how the GOP and Team Emmer think they're going to win: by talking about decade-old records from Dayton's divorce.

It's a pretty good example of the Chewbacca Defense, really: throw as much disjointed, irrelevant information at the wall and hope the jury is so confused that they don't notice you're an idiot, and thus ~~acquit~~ elect your guy who still thinks the waitstaff at your local restaurant are overpaid.

Pitiful. Disgusting and totally in character, but pitiful.

Tom Emmer's missed votes

TonyAngelo — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:00:00 GMT

Alliance for a Better Minnesota is currently running an ad highlighting Tom Emmer's habit of missing votes in the legislature. It just so happens that I am currently in the process of compiling all of the legislative votes of all of the current legislators for the formulation of a state level DW-Nominate style scoring system, meaning I just so happen to have a database of all of the roll call votes for the 2010 session and can evaluate these claims.

Anytime you hear "so and so has done a thing X number of times," it's helpful to know what X is relative to Y and Z. In this case Alliance for a Better Minnesota claims that Tom Emmer missed 142 votes of 621 taken, so at the very least it would be nice to know what the average number of votes missed is.

My database includes a total of 650 votes for the 2010 regular session and special session combined (there were two votes that took place in a one day special session) and Tom Emmer missed 147 of those votes. I'm not sure which votes I'm including that Alliance for a Better Minnesota isn't, the link they provide for their source is the same source I used to compile my database.

So while Alliance for a Better Minnesota claims Tom Emmer missed one out of every five votes (it's actually more, over 22% if you figure 142/621) according to my database Tom Emmer "only" missed over 18% of votes. The word only in that sentence is in quotes because Tom Emmer only missed more votes than any other legislator and it's not even close.
Again, according to the database I compiled of roll call votes, Tom Emmer missed 147, second in missed votes was Doug Magnus with 111 and they're the only two who missed more than 100. The mean number of votes missed was 19, but in a skewed data set like this one mean is not the measure that you want to use for average, median is and the median number of votes missed was 9.

That's rather staggering when put into context, Tom Emmer missed 147 votes and the average legislator missed 9. The z-score, standard deviations from the mean, of Tom Emmer's missed votes is an out of this world 4.61. You could say that Tom Emmer is the Babe Ruth of missing votes.

To be fair to Tom let's just compare him with other Representatives who were running for Governor.

Even among those house members who were also running for Governor, Tom Emmer was the gold standard of missed votes. The guy he beat for the Republican nomination, Marty Seifert missed only 1 vote.

I would say that the missed votes critique is a perfectly fair one and if anything Alliance for a Better Minnesota went easy on Tom Emmer by just focusing on how many votes he missed without putting it in the context of how many votes other legislator's missed.

Emmer's claims on public employees "misleading, dangerous"

Joe Bodell — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:45:44 GMT

PoliGraph has the goods on Tom Emmer's latest step-in-it-fest -- this time talking about how the evil public employees (most of them AFSCME members, go figure) are paid so much better than their counterparts in the private sector:

"On average, a person who works in the private sector in a job similar to that of somebody who's working in the [public] sector is making on average 30 to 40 less," the Republican gubernatorial candidate said on Aug. 26, 2010.
When it comes to national averages, he's correct. But a closer look at these numbers tells a different story.
...
[H]is statement is misleading for several reasons. First, he implies that, job for job, public sector workers make 30 to 40 percent more than private sector employees. That's not necessarily true. For instance, the average state government computer programmer makes $29.70 an hour while the average computer programmer working at a private firm makes an average of $36.40 an hour. And a lawyer working for government makes, on average, 26 percent less than a lawyer working at a private firm, according to the Federal Salary Council.
In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics stresses that it's dangerous to compare public sector average pay to private sector average pay because the government work force is more skilled than the private sector work force, so average hourly pay is naturally lower.

In my life outside the rough-and-tumble, dark-knight-esque world of political blogging, I am a software developer -- I would love to work in the public sector, but it would likely be a step down in terms of potential salary.

Given Tom Emmer's track record of questionable claims on worker salaries, is it more likely that

A.) He actually knows what he's talking about, or
B.) He's cherry-picking questionable figures to reinforce what he already thinks he knows -- that people who see fit to work in the public sector, on behalf of their fellow citizens, are actually Satan incarnate?

Tom Emmer for Governor: insulting, berating, and degrading his way to something resembling victory in November.

Some corporate front group or another ran an ad against Mark Dayton (updated)

The Big E — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:54:01 GMT

~~MN Forward, the front group for Target, Best Buy, Red Wing Shoes and other corporations MN Futures MN's Future, Jeff Larson's front group, has released it's first ad. This one~~ Some corporate front group attacks the DFL MN-GOV candidate Mark Dayton. Obviously, I'm confused about who's behind this. No surprise here, really. It was only a matter of time.

The Dayton Campaign had the following response:

"This is just lies, lies and more lies from people who won't identify themselves. Mark has made it absolutely clear that his plan to close Minnesota's budget hole and to invest in education will raise taxes only on the richest Minnesotans. This attack is especially ironic since it's Mark's plan that will prevent property tax increases. And Mark promised in 2003 to vote against any email tax in the U.S. Senate and has never suggested it in this campaign. Mark is determined to put an end to the middle class carrying the tax burden in Minnesota--it's time everyone paid their fair share."
(Email from Dayton's Communication Director Katherine Tinucci)

-- UPDATE --

D'Oh! Sorry for the screw up folks. I confused MN Forward and MN's Future. And then I confused MN's Future with MN Future. See the comments for the embarrassing (for me) details.

A mild intramural critique

Joe Bodell — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:57:00 GMT

It's a pretty safe bet that I'm going to vote for Mark Dayton in this year's gubernatorial race.

That being said, I'm not above offering constructive criticism to the DFL nominee.

In yesterday's debate, Dayton said "I want to make taxes more progressive. My opponents want to make them more regressive."

This is a clear statement, and it fits with the platform Dayton has espoused since the very beginning of his campaign. The guy has run numerous times, and obviously knows how to stay on-message.

The one minor problem I have with that statement is that it requires listeners to understand the value statement behind "progressive" and "regressive" tax policies. Don't get me wrong, I agree wholeheartedly, but do the words (which matter, thank you very much Frank Luntz) hit listeners in the ventricle?

"I want to make taxes more fair to the middle class. My opponents want to make them less fair." That, in my mind, would be a better use of terms that have visceral meaning to most listeners -- we all learned "fair" and "unfair" in elementary school, and understand the words without having to think about them.

It's a minor critique really -- I've been impressed at how disciplined the Dayton campaign's message machine has been, and their candidate has done a great job in debates and in public appearances of talking about his platform in a clear, forceful way. But if the last few election cycles have taught us nothing, it's that getting to voters' hearts works better than having to expend the effort necessary to get in their heads, and K.I.S.S. is, as always, a rule worth following.

Just my $0.02.

The More Things Change, The More GOPers Don't

TwoPuttTommy — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:29:13 GMT

I watched TBagger Wannabe Tom Emmer's 1st ad, and thought: "Hey! I've seen THAT one, before!" So, let's look!

OK, that was then; this is now - so, let's look at Emmer's 1st ad:

The theme GOPers are tryin' to push in both? "aw, shucks - MakeoverMark/TBaggerTom is really a nice guy."

And GOPers really have to push that message; it's their only hope. Because when it comes to policy, GOPers (as pointed out by Joe Bodell) want to give you four more years just like the last eight - only worse.

Emmer's new direction: same as Pawlenty's old one

Joe Bodell — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:54:17 GMT

I'll give Tom Emmer this much: he's in a tough spot.

Having to prove both that he's capable of leading the state of Minnesota in the next decade and that he's somehow different from the failed policies of Tim Pawlenty is quite a tall order. However, it doesn't seem like he's interested or capable of either part.

In an interview with Esme Murphy on Sunday, the following exchange took place:

Murphy: Controversy this week with Governor Tim Pawlenty saying that he's not sure if he's going to accept some $263 million of federal stimulus money aimed at Medicare and Medicaid funds for the elderly and poor. If you were governor right now, would you accept that money?
Emmer: No. And when you characterize it that way, I think it sounds a little bit more serious.

Yes, Mr. Emmer, the problem is how the anchor is characterizing it, and not with the fact that you'd refuse a big chunk of money from the feds that would help close the gaping hole in the state's budget. Sure. Awesome. Once again, this is Emmer following along and doubling down on what Tim Pawlenty has wreaked upon the state's fiscal situation.

The list goes on: Emmer voting against an early Medicaid expansion that would have helped poor Minnesotans. Emmer opposing a bill that would have leveraged a billion dollars in federal subsidies (at last count, about a sixth of the state budget shortfall).

Again and again, Emmer has supported Pawlenty as the current lame duck attempts to raise his miniscule appeal to the fiscal dead-enders in the GOP presidential sweepstakes. The question is whether Emmer has any ideas of his own, or if he's really so drunk on the anti-everything Kool-Aid that he doesn't see the damage eight years of Tim Pawlenty has done to our state.

Investors getting antsy with Target, Best Buy

Joe Bodell — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:17:03 GMT

As a stopgap solution on the road toward making such donations illegal once more, this isn't a bad turn of events:

A few Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. institutional shareholders weighed in Thursday on the flap over the companies' political donations in Minnesota, urging the boards of both retailers to increase their oversight of campaign contributions.
...
"A good corporate political contribution policy should prevent the kind of debacle Target and Best Buy walked into," said Trillium vice president Shelley Alpern. "We expect companies to evaluate candidates based upon the range of their positions -- not simply one area -- and assess whether they are in alignment with their core values. But these companies' policies are clearly lacking that."
The shareholders said the donations don't mesh with corporate values that include workplace protections for gay employees and risk harming the companies' brands. Walden senior vice president Tim Smith said such giving can have "a major negative impact on company reputations and business."

A good corporate political contribution policy would be "don't do it. Ever." But forcing companies to think about their image before they engage in these types of hypocritical games is a decent thing, and if the Supreme Court won't uphold laws that do it, it falls to institutional investors to keep honest the companies in which they invest. For now.

What is Tom Emmer afraid of?

Joe Bodell — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:00:00 GMT

Perhaps the Republican gubernatorial candidate decided that two debates was enough, and he's tired of being beaten to a rhetorical pulp on the issues that matter to Minnesota. In any case, the Detroit Lakes Tribune is concerned about the decision, and thinks Emmer should reconsider:

When it comes to rural issues, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer hasn't exactly been reassuring in his campaign so far.
He plans to skip a candidate forum sponsored by the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities on Thursday in Winona.
DFLer Mark Dayton and Independent Tom Horner will be there. Emmer should too.
Especially since he aims to solve the state's $6 billion budget gap through spending cuts - so far, without giving specifics.
It doesn't take a math professor to figure it out: If Emmer wins, cities can kiss goodbye to what's left of their Local Government Aid from the state, and counties can do the same thing with what's left of their state aid.
The programs - designed to keep property taxes under control in outstate Minnesota - have already suffered disproportionate cuts in recent years, particularly through Gov. Tim Pawlenty's unallotment process.
It's a safe bet that they will be the first cuts that will be made by someone looking to slice his way out of a $6 billion hole.

Taken by themselves, newspapers in rural Minnesota don't have huge readership. But their readership is loyal as all get-out, and there are lots of these papers around the state. If Emmer decides to throw in the towel in addressing the issues that matter most to Greater Minnesota, and he's not planning to compete too hard for the few Republican votes remaining in the big cities, it's difficult to see how he plans to win the gubernatorial race.

Which is fine by me, frankly.

Primary Post Mortem

TonyAngelo — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:41:02 GMT

The body has been lying in the streets for a week and the decomposing has begun, undaunted I am going to rip apart the stinking carcass of the DFL primary and try to determine exactly what happened and why. Sorry for the imagery, that's where the title took me.

87 Counties

I posted this last week, but I still think it's the most illustrative reason of exactly why Mark Dayton won the DFL primary.

Joe pointed something out in the comments of that post, which is that you don't get a sense of population density from this map and that's true, but in a way it sort of misses the point. The reason Margaret Anderson Kelliher made it close was because she racked up big vote totals in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis in particular, but the reason Mark Dayton won is that he racked up small vote totals all across the state and that's what this map helps to illustrate.

Kelliher won Hennepin County by 16,255 votes. She won Ramsey County by 5,527 votes. Dayton won Anoka County by 2,670 votes, Itasca County by 1,129 votes and 65 counties by vote margins of less than 1,000. Kelliher won a handful of counties with less than a thousand votes as well, but most of these were won with less than one hundred votes.

Dayton's campaign was a take on Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, you could call it the 87 county strategy.

The Decider

Here are the final numbers:

Mark Dayton won the election by 6,972 votes. One county I didn't mention above, St. Louis County, he won by 7,332 votes. That's the election right there.

Losing St. Louis County by that much, coupled with losing the vast majority of counties by smaller margins, made Kelliher's task in the metro all but impossible. I said this prior to the election:

If MAK is going to win though, she has to do better in the Twin Cities than the polls have shown. If she can't get to parity in her base areas she doesn't really have a chance. In order for her to win her grassroots focused campaign has to turn out the Twin Cities and St. Louis County, otherwise it's Dayton in the general.

Kelliher did what she needed to do in the Twin Cities; it was a failure to gain any traction in St. Louis County that cost her the primary.

The X-Factor

It's hard to say how much of this was due to Yvonne Prettner Solon's presence as Mark Dayton's running mate, but clearly she had an impact on the results, much more so than Kelliher's running mate, John Gunyu did.

It's impossible to know now what would have been, but if Kelliher had picked Tom Rukavina as her running mate would he have been able to bring home some iron range votes for her? Would it have been enough matter? These are fun questions, but in the end, the choice was made and the election is now in the books and we'll never know what could have been.

This may have been the critical decision of the campaign when all is said and done though, Margaret Anderson Kelliher picked someone who could help her govern, Mark Dayton picked someone who could help him win the primary. Who made the right choice?

Below is a breakdown of Hennepin County into Minneapolis and not Minneapolis.

What you can see looking at this is that Kelliher dominated in the city of Minneapolis, but in the rest of Hennepin County Dayton kept it close.

Now the same breakdown of St. Louis County.

In contrast Dayton won Duluth handily and won greater St. Louis County by even more. This is where a Rukavina selection could have helped Kelliher the most since his Virginia base is in the heart of St. Louis County. I don't mean to keep harping on this point and I honestly don't know if a Rukavina selection gets her over the hump, but many DFLers, including myself, were a little skeptical of the Gunyu selection and the outcome of this election just amplifies that skepticism, right or wrong.

The Third Wheel

The conventional wisdom prior to the election was that Matt Entenza would hurt Kelliher more than Dayton, but there really isn't any evidence that happened. There isn't a lot of correlation between the candidates when you compare their number of votes per county, meaning there isn't any evidence that Entenza affected Kelleher's numbers more than Dayton's. In fact the highest correlation was between Dayton and Kelliher, which is what you would expect.

As I said the correlations are not strong, but it would appear that Matt Entenza actually took votes from Mark Dayton just a little bit more than from Margaret Anderson Kelliher, it's not to a high enough degree to be significant though. Of course, that's just looking at the final numbers, if Entenza hadn't been in the race the entire texture would have been different so who knows what would have happened.

Turnout

To evaluate turnout I compared this year to the average turnout in 2002 and 2006. As we all know by now DFL turnout for the primary election was much more robust than most had expected, approaching almost 15% of eligible voters when most, including SOS Mark Ritchie, thought 10% would be more likely. This was more than a 50% increase over the average turnout in 2002 and 2006.

The below table of the counties with the highest turnout increase contains two numbers, "% change" is the percentage that voter turnout increased in that county versus the average of the previous two gubernatorial primaries, "vs state" is that change minus the increase of the state as a whole. So the "vs state" column is the percentage of increase above and beyond the increase of the state as a whole.

Kelliher won Carver County, Entenza won Lyon County and Dayton won the rest. These counties do not have a lot of voters though, so let's look at some counties that do.

Above are the six counties that had the most voters on primary day, seventh place, Olmsted County had almost 10,000 less voters than Washington County, so these are the six big counties. What you see here is that Kelliher did very well in the most populous places and the counties she won had a higher turnout than the rest of the state. But this trend was confined to the most populous counties; her campaign didn't display any particular ability to turnout the less populous counties.

Looking at the turnout from all the counties there was little correlation between turnout and the performance of any of the candidates, so while in the most populous counties Kelliher won, she seems to have done so by turning out her base, this didn't happen in greater Minnesota and it especially didn't happen in St. Louis County.

Conclusion

Unlike my colleague, Two Putt Tommy, I don't view this election as a systematic failure on the part of the DFL party. Mark Dayton is known statewide and liked by longtime DFLers, no matter who got the endorsement and what the DFL did, this was going to be a tough race to win. Add to that the fact that Dayton didn't make any forced errors and had the money to run lots of ads made their task even more daunting and yet, they almost pulled it off.