A big lead, but race isn’t over

09/25/2006

BY RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER
Pioneer Press

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar is well ahead of her Republican opponent Mark Kennedy in a recent Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio poll, but don’t expect the candidates to stop treating the race for the open Senate seat as a close one.

The poll found 52 percent of registered voters would vote for Klobuchar and 37 percent would choose Kennedy if the election were held immediately. The poll, conducted last week, includes voters from across Minnesota and is the latest in a string of polls that show Kennedy behind Klobuchar in voter preference.

Although the spread is wide — 15 points — it’s not insurmountable, according to experts. Campaigns, parties and the Minnesota electorate can do much in the next six weeks. That means voters should expect lots of ads, fliers, speeches and exhortations from the candidates and their supporters before Election Day.

“People know this is going to be a close, competitive election,” said Klobuchar campaign manager Ben Goldfarb.

Pat Shortridge, Kennedy’s campaign manager, said he always knew Kennedy would be behind in the polls shortly after Labor Day, and both Republicans and Democrats still view it as a “very, very close race.”

Their comments are fairly typical campaign spin, but they also reflect the reality of high-stakes campaigns in Minnesota.

Here voters can register on Election Day, which means people who haven’t voted before can come out to support someone who strikes their fancy in the next six weeks. Those folks tend not to be reflected in the Pioneer Press/MPR poll or other polls.

Those same-day-registered voters likely helped with Jesse Ventura’s surprising win in the 1998 gubernatorial election. He won 37 percent of the vote to defeat now-Sen. Norm Coleman and former attorney general Skip Humphrey. A poll in mid-October 1998 showed Humphrey with a commanding lead and Ventura trailing a distant third.

KNOWING NAMES

That history may offer Robert Fitzgerald, the Independent Party’s Senate candidate, some measure of hope. He attracted only 1 percent of support in the voter survey. That’s the same percentage as the Green Party’s Michael Cavlan.

Unlike Cavlan, Fitzgerald has the benefit of the Independence Party’s major-party status, which means he’s been invited to statewide debates. That’s earned him enough exposure so that more than a third of those polled said they recognized his name.

“That’s fantastic,” he said.

Still, only 4 percent of Minnesotans have said they have a positive opinion of him, and 30 percent said they were neutral on Fitzgerald.

In contrast, Kennedy and Klobuchar, who have large campaign organizations and established parties behind them, have near-universal name recognition. More than 90 percent of those polled said they had heard their names before.

The details in those numbers show some trouble spots for Kennedy. Nearly a third of those polled said they have an unfavorable opinion of him, while 35 percent said they viewed him positively. That compares with a 54 percent positive rating for Klobuchar and 19 percent negative.

Kennedy is a three-term Republican U.S. House member from Watertown. Voters might think worse of him because of his association with now-unpopular President Bush and the war in Iraq.

He may also suffer from his campaign two years ago against Democrat Patty Wetterling. Before the campaign, Wetterling was best known for her work on crime issues after her son Jacob was abducted in 1989.

Late in the 2004 campaign, Kennedy and his supporters began running ads directly questioning Wetterling’s politics. One said she had “latched onto radical extremist groups.” Another said: “The more we learn about Patty Wetterling, the more surprised we are.”

Kennedy won that race but may now be paying the price.

“I really think Mark Kennedy is dangerous. I didn’t like his tactics in the race with Patty Wetterling. I don’t like his tactics now,” said Kathleen Miller, a St. Paul housewife and Democrat who took part in the poll.

Susan Phillips, of Forest Lake, considers herself independent of party affiliation. She also answered the poll questions and said she is pulled to Kennedy’s message but not his way of campaigning: “I like some of the things Kennedy is saying. But I won’t vote for him. He had such a dirty campaign last time.”

This year, Kennedy was the first in the Senate race to run television ads directly addressing his opponent, perhaps a sign that he’s working to bring down voters’ positive opinion of Klobuchar.

In the ad, the campaign essentially alleged that Klobuchar, the Hennepin County attorney, is a hypocrite. Klobuchar’s campaign said the TV spot was an attack ad.

WILL THEY VOTE?

Still, Kennedy won the support of nearly all Republicans in the poll. They made up about a third of those polled, and nearly 80 percent of them said Kennedy is their choice.

“He votes with the president and I appreciate (that) he supports the president in a time of war,” said Tim Gunderson, a Republican repairman from Brainerd who participated in the poll. “He’s done a good job in the House of Representatives. He’s a solid conservative. That’s what I look for.”

Klobuchar had only wooed 14 percent of Republicans, according to the poll.

That could be a weakness come Election Day if Republicans win the get-out-the-vote fight. That effort could swing as much as 5 percent of the vote toward a candidate. Given Minnesota’s tradition of close electoral races, whichever party does that best could get their candidates into the winner’s circle.

“In a close race, you can’t take anything for granted,” said Joe Weber, a Republican consultant. He said sophisticated databases allow parties to target their supporters in get-out-the-vote efforts more effectively than ever before.

If Democrats feel complacent about voting in the Senate race because polls show Klobuchar is ahead, that’ll be a problem for her.

“You need to operate as though the race is close, always,” said Jeff Blodgett, former campaign manager for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone. Democrats tend to be less likely to vote in nonpresidential election years than Republicans.

That means no matter what the polls say, potential Kennedy and Klobuchar supporters should expect phone calls, mailings, campaign ads and personal visits aplenty to get them to their polling places in the days leading up to Nov. 7.

About the poll

This poll of registered Minnesota voters was conducted for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio from Sept. 18 through Sept. 20. The polling was done by telephone by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Washington, D.C.

The survey included 625 Minnesotans chosen through a random variation of the last four digits of telephone numbers. Quotas were assigned to reflect voter turnout by county. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.