The Weekly Wrap 4-20
Because I’m a terrible, no good blogger, I did not write about the recent SurveyUSA poll that was released concerning the approval ratings of Minnesota’s incumbent Governor and Senator, Mark Dayton and Al Franken. So I will do that in the wrap, as well as touch on other topics of interest to the Minnesota political geek.
♣ More from the SurveyUSA poll:
SurveyUSA (4/8, 9/5/2013 in parenthesis):
Do you approve or disapprove of the job Mark Dayton is doing as Governor?
Approve 49 (47)
Disapprove 40 (36)
Undecided 12 (16)
(MoE: ±4.3%)
The trend lines here are from last September. SurveyUSA polled Minnesota, and the Governor’s race, more recently than last September, but in the Feburary poll they only asked horserace questions, not approval questions. So a poll from September is where the trend lines are coming from.
For the Governor these trend lines are good. His disapproval numbers have gone up more than his approval numbers but all the movement is within the margin and could just be noise. But when you have a roughly ten point approval advantage, stability isn’t the worst thing.
Mark Dayton’s numbers have been quite stable for some time now, even with the rocky roll-out of MNSure and a bit of acrimony at the Capitol. The fact that Dayton has weathered the storm and not seen any disintegration of his approval numbers is good news for him and bad news for the clown car of Republicans who hope to take him on in November.
SurveyUSA (4/8, 4/20/2013 in parenthesis):
Do you approve or disapprove of the job Al Franken is doing as United States Senator?
Approve 46 (51)
Disapprove 42 (38)
Undecided 13 (10)
(MoE: ±4.3%)
If you thought I was going back awhile for the trend lines in the Dayton poll, well, I’m going back even further for these trend lines. Unlike the situation the Governor is facing, Senator Al Franken has seen some erosion in his numbers. But again, that trend line is from a year ago. Before the Obamacare roll-out.
The only other recent approval poll that has come out concerning Al Franken was from February by Mason-Dixon, and that poll painted a very different picture, giving Franken a net 21 point approval rating.
So there is some decent amount of discrepancy on just where Franken currently stands. As usual, more polls will help clarify the picture.
♣ One of Al Franken’s likely challengers, Mike McFadden, had a bad week. Dogged for awhile now by complaints that he hasn’t been answering questions about anything, McFadden went on Chad Hartman’s radio show and continued to not answer questions about anything (the McFadden interview begins at about 17 mins into the linked audio).
The thing about that interview that caught my attention though, was McFadden referencing his campaign using Snapchat to help raise his name recognition. This sounded a little weird to me as the only thing I had ever heard anyone use Snapchat for was to carry on illicit conversations. What good is Snapchat for raising name recognition?
Apparently not much good, I can’t find Mike McFadden on Snapchat. I also searched his Twitter feed for mentions of Snapchat, and found nothing. There is also no mention of it on his website.
So how exactly is he using Snapchat to raise his name recognition if I can’t even find him on Snapchat?
This is likely a case of me making something up when there’s actually nothing there, but if his campaign was using Snapchat as part of their social media strategy you would think that there would be some evidence of it. And if his campaign isn’t using Snapchat as part of their social media strategy, then why did he mention it?
♣ Continuing on the topic of Mike McFadden, he released a television advertisement this week:
“Miss” from Mike McFadden on Vimeo.
The irony of course is that the main criticism leveled against McFadden so far is that he has been less than straight with his own answers to people’s questions. But according to the hockey video above, it’s Al Franken who isn’t being straight.
♣ Some fundraising numbers:
Senate
Mike McFadden: $600,000
Julianne Ortman: $375,000
House
John Kline: $270,000
Mike Obermueller: $81,000
Eric Paulsen: $432,000
Sharon Sund: $34,000
Rick Nolan: $265,000
Stewart Mills: $203,000
State
Mark Dayton: $189,000
Kurt Zellers: $91,000
Dave Thompson: $67,000
Marty Seifert: $64,000
Jeff Johnson: $32,000
♣ A Minnesota State Representative has announced that he will not be seeking re-election next year:
State Rep. Kelby Woodard, a Belle Plain Republican who has been a rising star for the party in the state House, has announced he won’t seek re-election this year.
Woodard represents house district 20A, a seat that sports an R+11 hPVI and which Woodard won in 2012 by a 54-45 margin. This seat will almost certainly not be among the most competitive this fall.
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