The results are (almost) in, and they're clear: You, as a community, are awesome.
Tallies (with 98% of precincts reporting):
Candidate
Actual
Avg. Pred.
Error
Dayton
41.13%
39.93%
0.24
Kelliher
39.93%
39.51%
0.42
Entenza
18.99%
18.23%
0.76
According to the scoring rules for our contest, that's a total error of 1.41 -- as a group, you absolutely nailed this election. Average predicted turnout was 367,601, which is a bit lower than the actual 437,571 which have been counted so far, but I won't hold that against you.
And drumroll please....our winner of fabulous prizes is....
dgerber, who predicted a final outcome as follows:
Candidate
Actual
dgerber
Error
Dayton
41.13%
39.80%
1.33
Kelliher
39.93%
39.90%
0.03
Entenza
18.99%
20.30%
2.07
A smidge high on Entenza, but dgerber nailed MAK's result closer than anyone else, and had a total error of just 3.43. Honorable mentions go to Iams712 whose Dayton prediction of 41.25% was within 0.12 of the final result, TonyAngelo who pegged Entenza at 18.25, and TonyAngelo again for his turnout prediction of 446,887, just 2,429 votes over where we currently stand (and likely to get closer as the final, final results come in.
Congrats to our winner and thanks to everyone who participated!
If you want to know what's going on tomorrow night, MPP is one place you'll want to keep an eye on. Our intrepid bloggers will be hanging out at all the campaign headquarters tweeting and posting about what's going on.
Just like during the DFL Convention, we'll have a twitterfeed for all MPP front pagers. If you're going to be attending a party and would like your twitterfeed added, please say so in the comments. If you'll be attending a primary night party and would be willing to liveblog, let us know in the comments -- we'll front-page your post!
MAK - ericf & tonyangelo
Dayton - Rachel Nygaard & TwoPuttTommy
Entenza - Blue Collar Daughter
Dan Powers (MN-02) - The Big E
Rena Moran (65A) - Populista
John Choi & SD67 - Grace Kelly (she can be in multiple places at the same time! Amazing, no?)
SD50 - lams712
Joe will be at home monitoring all the shenanigans (he's got visitors in town).
Minnesota's primary election tomorrow. Had you heard?
Most folks around here are pretty familiar with the three candidates vying for the DFL gubernatorial nomination. So to what can we look forward depending on the victor?
Mark Dayton: If recent polls are accurate, Dayton is the odds-on favorite tomorrow. This will be a one-day problem for the DFL; if Dayton does win, the party's central committee will meet as soon as Wednesday to endorse him and the general election season will officially begin. But there will be longer-term questions to address about the viability of the current party endorsement system and the role of media, money, and grassroots campaigning -- of course, the direction of those conversations will be heavily influenced by whether Dayton wins the general election as well, a proposition that is well within the bounds of reason.
Personally, I wouldn't mind a discussion about moving to an endorsement system like Connecticut's regardless of whether Dayton wins, but who knows how much my opinion is worth.
X Factor: Yvonne Prettner Solon would be a huge asset in bringing home votes from northern Minnesota.
Margaret Anderson Kelliher: House Speaker Kelliher's primary campaign has been based on a theme of competence and sound management for state government. But her task has been to break through the air wars being fought by Dayton and Matt Entenza using the party's field operation to turn out loyal DFL voters tomorrow. If it works, it's validation for the advances the DFL has made in the past decade in the areas of targeting, voter ID, and GOTV. If it doesn't, then the party has successfully driven primary turnout high enough to provide its eventual nominee with a great boost in likely voters heading into November. Win, lose, or draw, the Speaker has done her part so far to build up for DFL success this year.
Matt Entenza: This seems like the unlikeliest win scenario given recent polls, but Entenza's campaign has put on a brave face and insisted that their supporters are holding steady for tomorrow and that they are more committed than those claiming to support the other two candidates. The other candidates' support would have to be a lot softer than Entenza's for it to matter. I've noted for a while now that Entenza's knowledge on policy matters is great, but that he hasn't been able to really catch fire with inspirational stump presence -- a classic "head vs. heart" problem.
In running a pretty clean race with some solid TV ads and only minor barbs for the other candidates, Entenza has definitely cleaned up the bad taste left in many party regulars' mouths after the 2006 AG's race debacle. If the polls bear out and Entenza does not emerge victorious tomorrow, I think he still has an important role to play. If he bucks the trendlines and somehow does emerge victorious, I think the process of the DFL leadership sorting out just what the heck happened takes a few days longer; ultimately, however, the result is still the same. Unify, and go toss the spluttering Emmer campaign an anchor.
Oh, and FYI: The MPP Prediction Contest is currently running an average predicted result of
(Pushing this back up to the top to make sure we have as many participants as possible -- we're also tracking community-wide averages here, so we'll have a "Wisdom of the Crowd (or lack thereof!)" post after the fact.
Predict away -- remember, we're dead serious about the fabulous prizes! - promoted by Joe Bodell)
We are officially one week away from the DFL gubernatorial primary, in which either Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Mark Dayton, or Matt Entenza will become the party's nominee to face Republican Tom Emmer and Independence Party candidate Tom Horner (probably) in November.
Wow, that's a mouthful. Anyway, this will be the official prediction contest thread -- to be considered for the contest, leave a comment in the following format:
MAK: ##.#
Dayton: ##.#
Entenza: ##.#
Statewide turnout: ######
Where the ##s are replaced by a number indicating the candidate's final percentage. The winner will be the submission who misses the final percentages by the smallest total margin. So if the final numbers are
MAK: 38.6
Dayton: 40.2
Entenza: 21.2
And you submitted
MAK: 40.9
Dayton: 37.5
Entenza: 21.6
Then your total miss margin would be (40.9 - 38.6) + (40.2 - 37.5) + (21.6 - 21.2) = 2.3 + 2.7 + 0.4 = 5.4. As in golf and other silly sports, lower scores are better. The statewide turnout (total number of votes cast in the DFL gubernatorial primary) will serve as a tiebreaker, just in case, and closest figure will win regardless of The Price is Right rules.
And as implied in the headline, there are fabulous prizes at stake, prizes which may or may not be MN Progressive Project t-shirts available in a variety of Large and XL sizes!
That headline may give the impression that there's something horribly wrong with the Minnesota Poll that came out this weekend showing Mark Dayton at 40%, Margaret Anderson Kelliher at 30%, and Matt Entenza at about 17%.
Nah, nothing really major. Given the large margin for error in low-turnout races like this, the results of this poll don't surprise at all. I think there's a significant chance that MAK overperforms this poll next week based on the strength of the DFL's statewide field operation, but the bottom line is that most DFL primary voters know and have a pretty favorable opinion of Mark Dayton.
After the poll was released, Matt Entenza's campaign was quick to note that the primary will be a low-turnout affair, seemingly emphasizing that their supporters are a better bet to show up eight days from now. We'll see, I guess, but these numbers don't bode well for the former Minority Leader.
Some poignant snippets from the Star Tribune's writeup, to which I only grudgingly link since they insist on breaking it up into four separate pages so they can show you more stupid ads you don't care about:
The poll highlights some strengths for the Democrats -- particularly Dayton -- and some notable weaknesses for Emmer.
In the general election match-ups, the Democrats seem to have particularly wide leads among women and people older than 45. The gap widens among those over 65, where Dayton holds a significant advantage. Emmer's only identifiable strengths were among those who earn more than $75,000 a year and among Minnesotans between age 35 and 44.
That's about right too -- the GOP's only age-based demographic advantage is among Generation Xers; their only income advantage is among the upper levels of professional fields. Younger voters, older voters, and the middle class are generally behind the DFL's priorities regardless of how well or poorly the party has communicated them.
The poll also suggests that come November, Independence Party endorsee Tom Horner -- who trails the field -- could draw equally from Democrats and Republicans in a general election unless Kelliher is the nominee. In a Kelliher-Emmer match-up, Horner would draw far more from Republicans than from Democrats. That would be a change from the dynamic of previous elections, when Democrats have been more vulnerable to third-party candidates.
I generally don't think "contrast" is a legitimate issue to raise in intramural races until there are numbers backing it up. Now there are -- despite not being the world's most charismatic campaigner, Margaret Anderson Kelliher definitely provides a stark contrast, in background and visual impression, to the Toms.
With a week to go, I have to say I've been pleasantly surprised to see the intramural long knives staying in their sheaths. Hopefully the next eight days can remain a relatively cordial contest on the issues, and next Wednesday we'll have a nominee to win this race (finally).
I just got back from Utah last night, and I'm pleased to say I'm coming back to good news: according to Rasmussen, of all pollsters, all three DFL gubernatorial candidates are leading Tom Emmer.
Dayton: 40
Emmer: 36
Horner: 10
Undecided: 14
MAK: 40
Emmer: 35
Horner: 11
Undecided: 14
Entenza: 37
Emmer: 36
Horner: 12
Undecided: 15
Dayton's and MAK's results are essentially the same -- it looks like the only real shift among all three is that Entenza runs a little behind the other two, losing a few points among self-identified Democrats to "Undecided".
Political analyst David Schultz said it looked like Emmer was clearly ahead back in May. He believes two things have changed. He believes the democrats are now better known than a few months ago and Emmer's recent dispute with waiters and waitresses didn't help.
"I think there is some erosion of support for emmer regarding comments he's made about tips and minimum wage"
Alec brings up a good point in that diary linked above -- Rasmussen's house effect is about four points. That doesn't make their numbers wrong (especially given that about half of the polls done this cycle have been done by Rasmussen, so there may be a "poll to push the results" effect when all is said and done) but it does give us some insight into the way they build their likely-voter models.
But folks -- there's more to this than Shultz is saying in the Fox9 article. The great news about this poll is that this is how a primary should be run. Instead of one campaign opposing Tom Emmer, we have three, and instead of the media allowing Emmer a free pass, plenty of news coverage has been showered on the three DFL candidates instead (Waitergate notwithstanding). All three teams are working hard, and there haven't yet been any public spats that will preclude them from working together, and hard, from August 11th through November.
It looks like we have a great shot at avoiding the intramural bloodbath some worried about before the state convention. No complaints here.
There are many interesting angles to the latest Tom Emmer foot-in-mouth fiasco regarding his statement that servers and bartenders make $100,000 or more per year. Here's the latest twist: The Eagle Street event was set up by special interest lobbyists who, in a scene straight out of Thank You for Smoking, swooped in to smooth things over.
In fact, Geisen [co-owner of Eagle Street] said, "lobbyists" who set up the Emmer appearance were on their way down to smooth things over and correct his quote, something that seems to be a full-time job these days.
(Star Tribune)
Let's review.
Tom Emmer is not on working people's side -- He thinks the business owners need more money while some of the lowest paid workers in our economy deserve a $3 an hour pay cut.
Tom Emmer thinks wait staff and bartenders are getting rich - He claims many earn $100,000 a year. Which is obviously complete hog wash.
Is this the Tom Emmer job creation plan?
As I pointed out in an earlier post, How extreme is Tom Emmer? Part II: jobs and the economy, Emmer has offered no concrete jobs plan. All we get are bumper sticker statements about shrinking government and bunk about how the magical hand of the free market will solve everything.
Well ... I suppose I could let Emmer say it for himself. Here's the latest:
"Government may be the most important employer in Saint Paul, but it is the rest of the state that pays the bills. We will talk to manufacturers and employers of all stripes this week asking what they see as critical to get our economy moving again.
"We will ask them how government hinders their efforts, and how government can help. Not through phony 'stimulus,' but through enabling them where we can, and getting out of the way when we must."
(emmerforgovernor.com)
There are three threads to any discussion of where the Minnesota Governor's race (MN-GOV) stands: the DFL primary, former Republican Tom Horner peeling moderate Republican voters from Tom Emmer and the Republican's gift to the DFL that keeps on giving, Emmer himself.
The primary is on August 10th and the three DFL candidates, Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Mark Dayton and Matt Entenza, are all are working hard. All three are criss-crossing the state trying to meet as many likely primary voters as possible. A key difference is that Dayton and Entenza are self-funding.
We will find out if MAK can combat their millions. Her campaign claims their grassroots effort trumps the Dayton and Entenza millions.
Former Republican Tom Horner sounds and acts like what Republicans used to be before the fundamentalist, teabaggers and anti-tax radicals took over the party. The truth is Horner is '94 Gingrich Revolution Republican. This isn't so moderate, but Republicans who can't stand Emmer will see Horner as a reasonable alternative.
And Emmer isn't helping himself. His latest gaffe pronouncement that wait staff make too much money and that the minimum wage needs to be lowered exemplifies how extreme he is. Emmer is making it easy for whomever wins the DFL primary.
He believes that Arizona's anti-immigration law is a "wonderful first step." He characterized Al Gore's work as "climate porn." He has promised to never raise taxes under any circumstance. He has promised to shrink government despite years of cutting down to the bone under Gov. Pawlenty. He's also a Tenther. Finally, there's this doozy:
"I don't think you can call yourself a freedom-loving American and be a Democrat." -- Tom Emmer, 9-26-09
(Marshall Independent)
TV advertising is a powerful thing when done well.
Forget the money factor for a second and put aside the fact that most readers here are probably pretty familiar with the DFL gubernatorial primary candidates. Mark Dayton and Matt Entenza both have really effective ads running right now, Dayton with an efficiently produced biographical summary/platform intro and Entenza with a pivot from the BP oil spill disaster to clean energy and job creation.
DFL-endorsed Margaret Anderson Kelliher is running a significant risk by not engaging in the air wars at this stage of the campaign. For a relatively small investment, she can get her face, her story, and her message in front of voters who, like it or not, may only be aware of two candidates in the race right now. Some of these voters will show up to the polls in August and vote, and quite possibly make the difference in the results. From the outside, her strategy seems focused on winning a narrow victory in the primary with the strength of the DFL's turnout machine behind her, and saving her resources for the general election. A sound plan, if and only if it works.
Kudos are due to all three campaigns for sticking it to right-winger Tom Emmer in public appearances and focusing on the positives and their own platforms (which they all largely share, other than Dayton's "Tax the Rich" meme). None has yet gone negative on either of the other two to any large degree. And for Team MAK, the focus on People Power is great -- but it only goes so far.
At some point, you simply have to make the gut-check decision to be Pappy O'Daniel for a few moments, and do some mass-communicatin'. Having the grassroots at your back is great, but it only constitutes a small advantage in a primary like this one. Against two other candidates already competing on the air, Team MAK is going to need an X factor of some sort to stay competitive as Dayton solidifies a base of support and Entenza's name-recognition rises.
Compared to identical SurveyUSA tracking polls released 6 weeks ago ...
Dayton is up 4 points; Emmer is down 7.
Kelliher is flat; Emmer is down 6 points;
Entenza is up 2 points; Emmer is down 5.
That fits the conventional wisdom pretty closely -- plenty of voters are waiting on the results of the DFL primary to make a decision among the three, and Emmer's extremism is cutting through his campaign's and his party's attempts to hide it. One of the good things about solid pollsters like SurveyUSA is that they usually poll races like this one repeatedly, so we get good trendlines within a single methodology.
Speaking of that DFL primary...
26% Kelliher
39% Dayton
22% Entenza
3% Idusogie
11% Undecided
Peter Idusogie is a nice guy and all, but there is no excuse for 3% of the primary electorate to actually be supporting him unless they simply don't know any of the other three yet -- which would be somewhat surprising, since SurveyUSA applied a likely voter screen in this poll. If you're really a likely DFL primary voter, chances are that you recognize and like at least one of these three.
The rest makes sense -- MAK gets a little boost from the DFL endorsement, but Dayton still has a huge advantage in name-recognition and electability among the base, having appeared on several ballots and even winning a couple of statewide races before.
Without seeing the full crosstabs, it's difficult to see where Entenza's support is coming from with any granularity -- did his pick of Robyne Robinson help him among minority voters in the cities? Has his fairly effective-looking TV ad blitz helped him build up positive name-recognition over the past several weeks? Both?
We'll have Tony add this new poll to the GPI and put up a post incorporating it into the results asap.
Along with the good news Joe wrote about, there's even more good news. The Democratic Governors Association emailed out a memo today examining how the Republican Party's acceptance of the tea party movement isn't a good thing.
In the six states holding primary elections today, the GOP has already paved our general election path, forcing candidates who wanted to run as moderates down the rabbit hole of the radical Tea Party right.
What we've learned in this race for the base is that Meg Whitman really likes a border fence and insider stock deals at Goldman Sachs, that Terry Branstad needs Sarah Palin to burnish his conservative cred, and that Brian Sandoval is willing to alienate Latinos in his effort to appeal to conservatives and unglue himself from the largest tax increase in Nevada history.
The truth is, the GOP candidates on the ballot today all should have had cakewalks to their nominations. Instead, the "Tea Party effect" has forced the leading GOP candidates to spend countless millions to fend off primary opponents, pushed them to embrace failed Republican policies and - maybe most importantly - has led them to lurch to the far right in states where moderation is key to winning independents.
In our state, the Republican candidate with the better chance in the election, Marty Seifert, lost at the endorsement convention to the candidate further to the right, Tom Emmer. Emmer's straight out of the teabagger mold.
Why surprised? Not because of any policy or real political issue, to be perfectly honest. Emmer has done a great job boxing himself into the extreme right wing of the political spectrum without much help from the DFL campaigns.
Rather, it's about name recognition -- without knowing too much about MAK or Entenza (let's face it, they're simply not as well-known as a former U.S. Senator), poll respondents are still leaning toward voting for them by a statistically significant margin.
The other interesting figure is the stability of Republican Independence Party candidate Tom Horner's support -- the 17-19% he garners matches up pretty well with the support Dean Barkley got in his third-party bid in the 2008 U.S. Senate race. Subtract a couple of points worth of "too important to throw away a vote" folks around the state, and it's a dead ringer.
A couple of other interesting points that the Pi Press piece buried near the bottom:
The "tea party" has yet to catch fire in Minnesota, the poll showed. Twenty percent of respondents supported the anti-big-government movement, while 74 percent did not.
But 39 percent considered themselves conservatives, 36 percent said they were moderates and 23 percent identified themselves as liberals.
The political party breakdown was 39 percent Democratic, 32 percent Republican, 2 percent Independence Party and 24 percent independents.
It remains to be seen how the Tea Party will influence an actual general election -- will they come out in force for all Republican candidates, or only those that meet their right-wing litmus tests? It would be interesting to see actual crosstabs to figure out how many of that 36% of self-identified moderate voters and 24% of independent voters feel about the Tea Party -- best guess is that they're not big fans, given the overall Tea Party numbers. Bottom line: if the Tea Party comes out to vote in droves and no one else does, then the partisan breakdown may be a little off, and the topline numbers might lean a bit in the Dems' direction.
However, if the Tea Partiers don't come out in huge numbers -- or liberal-leaning demographics get to the polls too -- then this poll spells big trouble for Tom Emmer and his Dead-End caucus in the legislature.
I wanted to take a moment to tell you why I joined Matt and why I hope you will too. Matt shares my belief that Minnesota can be made great again through education and creating jobs through the clean energy economy. We both understand that the old way of doing things has failed us.
As Matt wrote in the Star Tribune, “Now more than ever we need government to be innovative and forward-looking. We need a government that does not accept the status quo of staggering from budget deficit to budget deficit—of patchwork policy that with increasing desperation tries to plug the holes in an ever leakier boat.”
This vision of Minnesota is shared by me and countless others who understand there is a new and better way of serving the public.
As we move further into election season, I wanted to personally ask you to join our team. I hope you will take a few minutes to watch the video below and join us today by making a contribution.
Finally! A campaign website that has everything voters need. I've been waiting and waiting for such a site. Kudos to Matt Entenza for providing it.
I must admit that I've been disappointed in the websites of most of the candidates. I expected more and got less. MAK's is not very interactive. I can't seem to communicate very well with her via her website.
Dayton's is little better. He's got three websites but none of them seem to do the job. He's got two Facebook pages which give information but there is no interaction with voters. One is merely his take on issues; the other is run by his staff but is not very up to date. The Dayton campaign seems to think that people can show up at his events with only a few hours notice. Voters would really like a few days notice so we can plan our schedules.
We have three great candidates for governor of Minnesota. They are Matt Entenza, Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Mark Dayton. As we all know, Kelliher has the DFL endorsement. Does this rule out the other two candidates? Of course not. The candidate with the most votes in the Primary on August 10 will be the one to run in the General Election in November.
Which of the three DFL candidates have the best chance of winning the DFL primary? There are various factors to look at. I'll name a few.
There's popularity, name recognition and reputation. The latter includes things the candidate has done in the past to show that he or she is good governor material. And of course there's the factor of whether the candidate can win in the general election in November. These are, of course, all open to speculation. Yet there are things the voting public will be looking at.
