Public Policy Polling: Dayton up three points
Public Policy Polling released a poll tonight that showed Democrat Mark Dayton with a lead of just three percentage points heading into Election Day. The poll found Dayton had support of 43 percent of those polled. 40 percent of those polled are supporting Republican Tom Emmer. 15 percent of those polled are supporting the Independence Party's Tom Horner.
Pollster Tom Jensen wrote on his blog that Minnesota's contest is turning into a base election where turnout for the two political parties will make the difference:
Neither Dayton nor Emmer really has any crossover appeal. Only 6% of Democrats are planning to vote for Emmer and just 5% of Republicans are for Dayton. That makes the state of this race pretty easy to spell out. Minnesota's a Democratic state so if the Democratic candidate wins all the Democrats and the Republican candidate wins all the Republicans and the independents split pretty evenly the Democratic candidate's going to win. That's where the contest stands right now so Emmer will have to make up some ground in the final days if he's going to pull this one out.
One other interesting tidbit is that Gov. Pawlenty may be a drag on Emmer. Pawlenty's approval rating in the poll is 43 percent. Fifty percent of those polled disapprove of the job he's doing. Just 23 percent of those polled are supportive of the idea of Pawlenty making a run for the White House in 2012.
The polling firm surveyed 2,058 likely Minnesota voters between October 27th and October 29th. The Margin of error is +/-2.2 percent.
You can read the full poll here.
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