by Tony Petrangelo

Feb 10, 2012, 8:00 AM

A-Klo, Dayton and the terrible, rotten, no-good Legislature

This is me, two weeks ago:

Posts about Amy Klobuchar polls are not really that fun to write. Every one is exactly the same, Amy is at around 55% and when you’re at 55% it doesn’t really matter what your challengers are doing.

And hey, look at that, this poll shows her at 55%. Against everyone. Again. For the third time. Call me shocked.

And ten weeks before that:

I might as well just write up a template for all these A-Klo poll posts, because they’ve all been the same so far. Amy Klobuchar is polling well over 50% against her announced opponents and is polling at 50% against the MN GOP’s A-team, who can’t even crack 40% against her.

And today:

SurveyUSA (2/3, 11/8 in parenthesis):

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 56 (55)
Dan Severson (R) 29 (23)
Undecided 15 (22)

Amy Klobuchar (D-inc) 59 (56)
Joe Arwood (R) 28 (22)
Undecided 14 (22)
(MoE: ±4.3%)

The real notable thing about this poll is that some of the undecideds have come off the fence and almost all of them went into the Republican candidates column, both Severson and Arwood are up 6 points since the last SUSA poll.

While that may seem like a bit of a worrying trend, it’s not. It’s was simply undecided Republicans, deciding to go with the Republican, which was going to happen anyway.

Observe:

What the above table shows is the percentage of undecided voters in the two match ups, broken out by party affiliation. What you see is that in the November poll there were a lot more undecided Republicans than there are now, which explains why the GOP candidates have gained.

The problem for them is that there are only so many undecided Republicans.

—

Compared to Amy’s numbers, Mark Dayton may not look that impressive, but compared to the Republican lead Minnesota Legislature, he’s smelling like roses.

SurveyUSA (2/3, no trend lines):

“Do you approve or disapprove of the job Mark Dayton is doing as Governor?”

Approve 50
Disapprove 33
Not sure 17

“Do you approve or disapprove of the job the State Legislature is doing?”

Approve 17
Disapprove 65
Not sure 18
(MoE: ±4.3%)

Mark Dayton continues to hover right around the 50% mark, PPP had him at pretty much the same numbers two weeks ago (53-34).

The numbers for the legislature though are just straight up dismal. They’re at a comically bad -48 spread. Even self-identified Republicans disapprove of the legislature’s job performance by a remarkably bad -21 spread.

If you thinks that’s bad though, check this: 30% of Republicans approve of the job the legislature is doing. 26% of Republicans approve of the job Mark Dayton is doing.

Worst. Legislature. Ever.