The Most Competitive Senate Race in the Country is Right Here (with graphs)

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