Throughout the course of the election, search trends were pretty similar between Franken and Coleman. However, right before the election, more people started searching for Franken at rates far beyond Coleman's. The graph above represents average search volume from Jan - Nov. 2. Anything above 1 represents larger than normal search volume for this period. So, by Nov. 2, there was a 24% larger search volume for Franken than Coleman. It is unclear what affect, if any, these searches had on voting outcome.
| Franken | Coleman | |
| Rochester | 48% | 51% |
| Minneapolis | 69% | 19% |
| St. Cloud | 54% | 42% |
| St. Paul | 61% | 25% |
| Hopkins | 57% | 38% |
| Mankato | 60% | 39% |
| Prior Lake | 38% | 57% |
| Duluth | 62% | 37% |
Minnesotans have backstage passes to one of the greatest political dramas since the 2000 Presidential race. Interestingly, this drama is seemingly more a product of weak candidates than a great partisan split. Recent articles in the Strib and on MPR suggest that many people who voted Obama did not cast a vote for any candidate in the Senate race. This non-decision means that either there was a mistake made in the marking of the ballot or there was simply no vote made. Either way, election officials are determining the intention of each ballot. Here’s some map pron via the AP that shows the concentrations of people that opted out of voting in the Senate race. St. Louis Co. leads the way. Way to go Northland, we’re finally #1 in something.
A good portion of the attention from this ‘no-vote paradox’ is being focused on St. Louis County. Coleman’s campaign recently challenged 100 ballots coming out of Mt. Iron that all went for Franken. Coleman’s campaign manager also called the recount results from the Iron Range ’statistical dubious’. Is there some trickery going on up north or is there some other explanation? Let’s do a cursory analysis (insert cheers or jeers).
Last week The Degausser wrote about how the Northland delivered heavily for Franken. St. Louis County, the County that the Coleman campaign is questioning ballot totals from, went to Franken by 22 points. However, the totals from last week to today have changed as election officials are certifying results. Look at how things have changed. Franken has gained 395 total votes from Lake, St. Louis, and Carlton Counties. Coleman actually lost 2 votes.
Votes Gained or Lost Since Nov. 5 | |||
| | Franken | Coleman | Barkley |
| Aitken | -5 | -2 | 0 |
| Carlton | 54 | 0 | 0 |
| Cook | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Itasca | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Koochiching | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Lake | 246 | 0 | 0 |
| Saint Louis | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| TOTAL | 395 | -2 | 0 |
We can see how Coleman’s campaign manager would be upset, but what are the probabilities of evil shenanigans?
The precinct in question is Mt. Iron P1. According to the MN Secretary of State, there were 891 registered voters on Nov. 4 in this precinct. Here are the breakdowns:
| Mt. Iron P1 | Franken | Coleman | Barkley | TOTAL |
| New | 506 | 211 | 95 | 812 |
| Old | 406 | 211 | 95 | 712 |
| New % | 62% | 26% | 12% | |
| Old % | 57% | 30% | 13% |
The election was never in doubt for Franken in this precinct, he was up nearly 2 to 1 before the re-count. Also it appears that that the 100 vote gain was simply human error in totalling rather than lost votes being found, which changes the probability of fraud.
For arguments sake, however, let’s assume the new votes were found votes. What would the probability that they would all be Franken votes? Here is what we need to know to do the calculation
The expected score out of these assumptions, according to a binomial probability equation is 102. This means that the 100 votes Franken got is actually less than the statistical expectation.
One thing to be aware of is that this assumes that the Mt. Iron P1 district has a normal distribution of partisanship. Considering the heavy Obama vote and long standing DFL affiliations in the area, partisanship is not split 50/50. Although the 100 vote windfall was a calculation error and not found votes, numbers suggest Franken would have fared better if the ballots were found in the trunk of somebody’s car and entirely within the realm of possibility given the political make-up of the precinct. So, yes, the 100 vote appearance is strange, but surprisingly, it is statistical aberration that did less damage to Coleman than odds would suggest.
I was reading my hometown paper just now and they are saying that Northland Dems dissed Franken. In it, they posit that the Northland didn’t deliver for Franken and that Barkley played spoiler. They also say that if just 600 more people would have voted for Franken, everything would be different. I disagree with their assesment.
The DNT suggests that because 77% of St. Louis County went for Obama and only 55% went for Franken that Franken failed. Comparing Obama to Franken is like comparing a Ferrari to a Yugo. No way is this an apples-to-apples comparison. Franken’s campaign never really got its shit together and is lucky to be where they are now. As the Degausser showed yesterday, he still managed to destroy Coleman in the Northland. This shouldn’t have happened and it is more a testament to people hating Coleman more than liking Franken.
If the DNT wants to blame somebody, which is retarded because Coleman shouldn’t have made it such a close race, they should blame Hennepin or Ramsey County voters. They voted less for Franken, had less turnout, and have a higher concentration of voters. There were more opportunities to win in the Metro-Area than in the Northland. Franken didn’t pull it out, even in a heavy DFL/Dem year.
If Ciresi was the DFL Senate candidate, he would have pulled more votes up North and probably would have won the election outright.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this article in the DNT is Forrum Communication’s way of saying that the Northland is moving more into a Republican/Independent mindedness. This has been Forrum Communication’s stated mission for the newspaper ever since they took control of it. Forrum Communications endorsed Coleman and owns 22 papers in MN. Moreover, their endorsement was made on the basis of one man’s (Steve McLister) opinion and forced onto the opinion pages of all affiliates. Could it be that Forrum Communication’s endorsement swayed enough voters for Coleman? Instead of blaming the Northland, the DNT should look at their own.
Yesterday on the Degausser we suggested that MN’s Arrowhead region could tip in favor of Franken. Boy howdy did it.
Because of the impending recount, all results reported here are technically unofficial, but Franken carried the region by 18 points (33,560 votes).
For those of you metro-centric folks who refer to anything outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul as outstate, here’s a map of the Arrowhead region (shaded in red). The counties that make up this region are Aitken, Carlton, Cook, Itasca, Koochicing (Kooch for those in the know. Or, if you want to get fancy, combine it with Itasca to get Kootasca), Lake, and Saint Louis. The major city here is Duluth (my home town, woot!).
Anyway, this region is reliable DFL territory. However, due to Franken’s rocky start and lack of strong ties outside of the metro-area, it was up in the air as to how he would perform in the North Country. Apparently, Franken went over well. Here are the numbers:
| Franken | Coleman | Barkley | |
| Saint Louis | 64,319 | 38,267 | 14,275 |
| Lake | 3,304 | 2,434 | 863 |
| Cook | 1,620 | 1,206 | 458 |
| Carlton | 9,517 | 6,099 | 2,555 |
| Aitken | 3,897 | 3,617 | 1,770 |
| Itasca | 11,544 | 9,264 | 3,182 |
| Koochiching | 3,091 | 2,845 | 721 |
| TOTAL | 97,292 | 63,732 | 23,824 |
| Percent | 52.6% | 34.5% | 12.9% |
In Duluth, Franken won by more than 20 points and St. Louis County had the highest percentage of Franken voters than any other county in the state, including Hennepin. Duluth also had a whopping 85% turnout rate, which will probably be one of the highest in the country.
The Arrowhead region provided Franken with over 8% of his total votes. Given the turnout and wide margin that he beat Coleman by in this area, Franken owes his recount to Northeastern MN, and specifically to Duluth.
Web analytics, the use of internet search traffic and page visit data, is just beginning to be used by campaigns to determine marketing efficacy. This practice is still in its infancy and the data is a little sketchy, but compiling data from the internet will be huge in future elections.
The candidates that can effectively use web analytics in the next election cycle (or this one, for that matter) will have a huge advantage over an opponent that cannot use the data. After the election, the Degausseer will attempt to unravel web trends of the MN Senate race to see if there was anything happening on the internet that could have evidenced the final outcome.
In the meantime, here is some quick info pr0n.
Charts show the google search indexes of Franken and Coleman through Oct 4 to Nov 2. Higher index means more searches. Again, since there is an error associated even with this data, searches are statistcally tied. Franken leads in internet searches by city, with more Duluthians searching for him (per capita) than any other city in MN.
Is Franken going to carry the Arrowhead region?
Finally, looking at average highs and lows for all polls, Coleman has a 3-point advantage. This advantage is again within a statistical margin of error, so the race is still a toss-up, but considering the overall data trends, Coleman appears on the verge of eking out a victory.Tomorrow, McCain spends part of the day in Pennsylvania before heading to New Hampshire, where he’ll hold his final town hall of the campaign in Peterborough, a place that McCain regards as something of a lucky charm. He held his first town hall meeting there during his 2000 campaign and wound up there on the eve of his comeback primary victory earlier this year. It’s “where our campaign has been rescued and resurrected many times before,” Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, told reporters yesterday.
… privately, McCain and his aides are unsure if it will be as lucky this time around. Down by 13 points in the state according to poll released yesterday, McCain and his aides view his stop there as more nostalgic than game changing. Indeed, a senior McCain aide says the candidate and his advisers have gone back and forth in recent days about whether the stop was time well spent in the final hours of the campaign.
He attended the University of Chicago, where he obtained a law degree and borrowed his nickname from the character in the ” Studs Lonigan” trilogy by Chicago writer James T. Farrell. He never practiced law. Instead, he took a job in a federally sponsored statistical project with the Federal Emergency Rehabilitation Administration, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies. Then he found a spot in a writers project with the Works Progress Administration, writing plays and developing his acting skills.
The result was “Division Street: America,” published in 1967 to rave reviews and best-selling success. It told the stories, in their own words, of businessmen, prostitutes, Hispanics, blacks, ordinary working people who formed the unit of America and also the divisions in society, using Chicago’s Division Street as a prototype of America.
It was a theme that Terkel would explore again and again, in “Hard Times,” his Depression-era memoir in 1970; in “Working,” his saga of the lives of ordinary working people in 1974; in “American Dreams; Lost and Found” in 1980; and “The Good War,” remembrances of World War II, published in 1985 and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others. … Late bloomers’ stories are invariably love stories, and this may be why we have such difficulty with them. We’d like to think that mundane matters like loyalty, steadfastness, and the willingness to keep writing checks to support what looks like failure have nothing to do with something as rarefied as genius. But sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.
Taking a page from the Democratic playbook of the mid-1990s, the Republican National Senatorial Committee has enlisted the help of some stars from that era to urge Minnesotans not to vote for Franken.
Maybe this video was meant to be funny or ironic. It is neither. Minnesota is so much more than ice fishing and the Vikings. It’s also about drinking like Wisconsinites and testing the boundaries of what qualifies as proper public attire.
The coasts tend to view Minnesotans as Jack Pine Savages. This ad treats us as such. Having Cliff Claven tell me who to vote for will not work. Everybody knows he was always full of bull shit anyway. Now, if they got Woody, that would be a different story.
Politico and Talking Points Memo reported today that former South Dakota Republican Senator Larry Pressler voted by absentee for Obama.
It will be interesting to see what effect, if any, this will have on the vote outcome in So Dak. I travelled there last week, and outside of a scattershot of yard signs in and around the rapidly expanding Sioux Falls, there was scant evidence of any non-GOP support between there and Mitchell. SoDak is going to go Red, but things like this would suggest that it will be, as in North Dakota, much narrower than local pols are used to.
It seems in this case Prairie Populism, as much as anything, drove this vote.
Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Politico learned Sunday.
Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he’d donated $500 to the Illinois senator’s campaign, cited the Democrat’s response to the financial crisis as the primary reason for his decision.
“I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul] Volcker better,” he said. By contrast, John McCain’s “handling of the financial crisis made me feel nervous.”
The former senator added that he hoped the next president would help place restraints on executive pay, and said: “I don’t think [McCain] will take action in that area, or he’s as likely to.”
Pressler was out of the Senate before I really started paying attention, but he seems to fit the mold of a Chuck Hagel. Unless I missed it, Hagel hasn’t suggested who his vote will be for this election. He has certainly given ample indication that he wouldn’t be a surprising swing to Obama.
-J. Oak
There have been seven new polls since our last post on MN’s Senate Race. People apparently have a lot of money to spend on these things. Anyway, instead of me telling you about them, just look at the pictures (after the jump).
Notice anything? Franken is trending higher. Looking at the graph of candidate’s spread advantage (the difference between poll numbers) Franken is trending an easy five points ahead. Many pundits (make spitting sound here) pick the state as a moderate Franken victory. I would get behind that, but now that we see the mighty Star-Tribune backing Coleman we will see what effect, if any, that has. I suspect little to none.
The polling methodology is missing cell phone only households and individuals with limited voter histories. In short, poll numbers are missing the youth which, as a group, are less likely to be swayed by mainstream media.
If pollsters want to maintain relevance in a world of web 2.0 they must devise ways of accounting for increasingly active young voters. Uncovering the political sway of this perennially ignored voting bloc is the key to getting at more accurate data. More importantly however, it would bring increased gravitas to a generation that is proving itself as one that values pragmatism over partisan affiliation. Something, I would say, this country (and state) really needs.
What happened at the old fountainhead of Yellow journalism, liberal bias - the old Red Star as conservatives liked to call the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Apparently it was his ability to stick his moistened finger in the air and check the direction of the wind that captured the Editorial Board’s collective heart:
Coleman didn’t begin his Senate service as an agent of bipartisanship. But that’s the note on which he wound up his six-year term and which he has sounded repeatedly in his reelection campaign. We like the trend we’ve seen and believe Coleman is capable of taking it further.
Aaron at MN Publius suggests a mildly conspiratorial, though certainly not implausible, reason for the endorsement:
The CEO of Avista Capital Partners, Thompson Dean, not only owns the Star Tribune, but is also on the board. His contributions indicate he only sends to Republicans, including to Rudy Giuliani’s PAC. Coleman is the only Senate candidate to receive money from Giuliani’s PAC this cycle.
Thompson Dean also fundraises for John McCain.
This, mixed with their right-wing editorial positions this cycle and knowing that their primary investments are in oil companies and health care firms, who could possibly be surprised by a Coleman endorsement?
Money - or the promise of making more of it - is certainly a reliable predictor of behavior. MN Publius has catalogued a significant number of out-of-character Editorial positions the Star Trib has taken in the past year, which, in addition to personnel changes on the Editorial board, provide several indicators that this may be a permanent shift to the center-right by the traditionally liberal newspaper.
I don’t disagree with MN Publius - newspapers are a dying medium, and the Star Trib’s continued existence depends on making a fundamental reorganization of its business model. Avista Capital Partners wouldn’t have come onto the scene in the past year if they didn’t have a plan to do so. The only question that remains is what the Star Tribune will look like, as a media outlet, when this transformation is complete. I think we can expect to see the Star Trib follow the PiPress’s lead in trimming the page size to Tabloid-size, more Katherine Kersten, AP wire news, an overall look akin to USA Today and less original reporting like what can be found at MinnPost.
- J. Oak
Could North Dakota be the new Missouri?
Maybe this is an outlier poll, and I don’t mean to step on the toes of the professional Poll Smokers on this site, and maybe its sample size is all wrong or someone is reading the compass backwards, but this appears to be a significant poll giving the State of North Dakota to Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Campaign.
While there certainly isn’t an overabundance of Presidential polling on North Dakota, it isn’t the first time Obama came out on top:
“The last publicly reported North Dakota presidential poll, taken Sept. 16-17, showed McCain led Obama 53 percent to 40 percent, the latest in a string of surveys this year showing the Republican was ahead in North Dakota. But an early poll, in February, surprised many politicos when Obama was shown leading 46 percent to 42 percent.”
But this is important primarily for what it says about a state that hasn’t gone Democratice since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 (over Goldwater), and has only gone Democratic three times since 1916, when it helped Woodrow Wilson squeak past a Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes and being big fans of term limits NoDak voted for FDR in ‘32 and ‘36 but not in ‘40 or ‘44. (***The Charles Evans Hughes candidacy really strikes me as bizarre and totally implausible today - SCOTUS Justices have personalities that only legal junkies and wonks can appreicate - I could however imagine a fiesty Ruth Bader Ginsburg appearing at an endorsing convention in the Midwest and discussing the difference between herself and a pit bull.)
While the conventional wisdom suggests that this poll likely overstates support for Obama in NoDak, it certainly underscores the problems McCain is having here, and elsewhere, sollidifying his base. Here, more than self-identified “Independent Republicans”, or “WeakRepublicans”, 17% of “Strong Republicans” identified themselves as likely Obama Voters. For their part, 73% of “Strong Republicans” identified as McCain voters, with 10% of “Strong Republicans” as Undecided. This is a BIG problem for McCain.
I think its fair to say that 4 years ago a campaign surrogate the level of “The Todd” (or First Dude or whatever) would not be heading to Moorhead, MN to stump 3 weeks before election day. This would be one of the largest cities (a whopping 32k individuals) in Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District, who can boast the Bluest of Blue Dogs Rep. Collin Peterson (D), and an otherwise reliably Republican Congressional District that voted for Bush over Kerry in ‘04, 55 to 43%, and Bush over Gore in 2000, roughly 55 to 41%.
“Todd Palin, the self-described “First Dude” of Alaska, is a familiar figure among snowmobile buffs and other outdoorsy types, said Tom Steward, the St. Paul-based regional communications director for the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign.”
Clearly, the Palin-McCain campaign is trying to replicate previous success with local Joe’s Six Pack: “Steward said Palin was a hit at September’s Hay Days Grass Drags, a Forest Lake, Minn., event marking the kickoff of the snowmobile racing season. “Hundreds of people flocked to him because they know him as a champion snowmobile racer and an outdoors guy,” Stewart said.”
Good Luck, Todd; by the way, we don’t call them “snowmachines” in the Red River Valley, FYI.
Link: “Obama Leads in ND,” http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=218215§ion=news.
Link: “Palin’s Husband to Visit Moorhead,” http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=218216§ion=news&CFID=101921012&CFTOKEN=71511221&jsessionid=8830fa1b78191ca3fa69
With only a few weeks left until the election, many of the races are hotter and nastier than Tila Tequila’s MySpace page. In Minnesota, the premier showdown is the Senate race between Norm Coleman, Al Franken, and Dean Barkley.
Although Coleman is the incumbent and has generally enjoyed comfortable approval ratings over the last six years, his Republican brand and association with the Bush Administration are heavy weights on his campaign.
Al Franken comes to the race with high name recognition and a large war chest. However, his campaign has been plagued by staff turnover, criticisms of his failure to pay taxes in 19 states, and his racy satirical background.
Dean Barkley, the Independence Party candidate, served a short stint as MN Senator in 02-03 when Jesse Ventura appointed him after the death of Paul Wellstone. Barkley, the veritable dark horse in this campaign, does have the real potential to play spoiler for either Coleman or Franken.
From the latter part of 2007, public opinion polls have been released tracking the electability of both candidates. In total, 35 polls have been taken from February 2007 to October 2008. Can these polls tell us anything about the possible outcome of the election in November? In a run of the mill race, these polls usually show the general sway of the electorate. But this isn’t your daddy’s senate race. The economy is crap and Beverly Hills Chiuahua spent multiple weeks as the highest grossing movie in the US. Quickly put, people are acting jittery, which is putting the Senate race up for grabs.
From May 07 to October 08 Coleman has experienced rocky approval and ultimately polls lower now than he did late last year. Franken rose in the polls early on, but stumbled in June when his tax issues came to the fore. Since that time however, Franken seems to have rebounded and through October has been leading Coleman. The latest Quinnipiac poll has Franken ahead by 2 points and several pollsters put Franken winning the race by 4+ points. Let’s look into this further. The polls reported in this analysis come from multiple sources. Each source uses a different methodology and has different margins of error. The methodological discussion is one best saved for another day. For now, let’s just say each has their own issues and assume the random sampling conducted for the polls was sufficient.
The reported numbers stated in the media from each poll are simply estimates. To get the full story, you have to look at the margins of error calculated for each poll. The margins of error in these polls range from +/- 2.8% to 4.5%. In addition to the margins of error is the associated confidence interval or the reliability of the estimate. For most polls, this interval is 95%, which means that 95% of the time the estimate will be within the margin of error. For more on these topics go to:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Info/polling-faq.html
Adding the margins of error from the Senate race polls and graphing them on top of each gives us a deeper level of analysis.
According to poll data, Coleman had consistently outpaced Franken until September. The points on the graph where the lines do not intersect are points where each candidate could have a clear victory. Coleman, has 10 of these points. Franken has just one, occurring a few weeks ago in October.
Alright, so we’ve looked at all of the polls. Let’s look at data from one poll source. Since Rasmussen consistently conducts polling, they provide the most data points. Using Rasmussen only polls we get a consistent survey methodology and more comparable data across time. This time we see that Franken opened up a wide lead in October. The interesting thing to note is that both candidates are descending.
According to poll data, Coleman had consistently outpaced Franken until September. The points on the graph where the lines do not intersect are points where each candidate could have a clear victory. Coleman, has 10 of these points. Franken has just one, occurring a few weeks ago in October.
Alright, so we’ve looked at all of the polls. Let’s look at data from one poll source. Since Rasmussen consistently conducts polling, they provide the most data points. Using Rasmussen only polls we get a consistent survey methodology and more comparable data across time. This time we see that Franken opened up a wide lead in October. The interesting thing to note is that both candidates are descending.
If we again look at all polls, Franken has never sustained a spread advantage. That is, he has never pulled ahead of Coleman and held it over time. Franken has come on strong in October, but the trend line suggest that lead is slipping. Why is this happening?
Considering the current state of things, there are many reasons why polling data would show that the major party candidates are losing ground. Where are they going? It appears people are turning to Barkley. Barkley has been included in the last 10 public opinion polls. Pulling these points out an interesting trend appears. Barkley’s ascension has come with Franken’s decline. Even more interesting, Franken is falling faster than Coleman, who has seemed to level out.
The wild card in all of this is the rising level of support for Barkley. Given the blow back of the negative ads Coleman has run against Franken and the sinking ship of the GOP party in general, people are looking toward other choices. The strength of the Independence Party candidate, Dean Barkley, and the 30% showing for Priscilla Lord Faris in the recent DFL primary election evidence that neither Coleman or Franken have this wrapped up.
Throwing even more data onto the pile, favorability ratings for Franken suggest that he has a lot of work to do in order to shore up some votes to win the election. His very unfavorable ratings are 8 points higher and his very favorable ratings are 6 points lower than Coleman’s. It seems, however that voters are unsure of what to make of both candidates since somewhat favorable and unfavorable ratings are opposite.
So, with all of this data all we are left with to make an educated guess are trends. Combining all poll data and doing some fancy month the above graph represents the trends of public opinion. If you trusted in the polls, Franken has a good shot of winning. Coleman is descending and Barkley has topped out. As we all know, however is that elections are won on the intangibles. The biggest key to victory for either Coleman or Franken is if they can get a few more people to believe them. This will be difficult for Minnesotans to do however, between a satirist and a carpet bagger, who can you trust??
-Allen Springvale
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