by Tony Petrangelo

Jan 25, 2013, 12:00 PM

The Weekly Wrap 1-25

You may notice that I have not been writing much in this new year, my output this week eclipsing my output from the entire month previous. It got so bad that I didn’t even write The Wrap™ last week.

It’s not like I’ve been doing nothing though. In fact I have been up to something, a super secret new LeftMN project. I will say no more, other than to say I will say more soon.

And with that bit of housecleaning out of the way, we proceed to the main event, The Weekly Wrap.

♣ The output this week that I referred to in the above paragraph was two posts about Public Policy Polling’s first two releases of their brand spanking new poll of Minnesota.

The first release concerned Al Franken and his prospects for re-election. The second concerned Mark Dayton and his prospects for re-election. In both cases the prospects look good and about the same amount of good.

PPP released a third part of that poll that I have not covered yet and will do so now. The third release is a grab bag of sorts, featuring approval numbers for President Obama and Senator Klobuchar and questions about who the Democrats should nominate for President in 2016.

I’m not going to concern myself with those numbers, click through to the PPP results to peruse them if you are interested. Instead I’m going to cover some of the questions they asked that concern issues likely to come up in the legislature this session.

PPP (1/23, no trendlines):

Do you think same-sex marriage should be allowed in Minnesota, or not?

It should be allowed 47
It should not 45
Not sure 8

Which of the following best describes your opinion on gay marriage: gay couples should be allowed to legally marry, or gay couples should be allowed to form civil unions but not legally marry, or there should be no legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship?

Gay couples should be allowed to legally
marry 43
Gay couples should be allowed to form civil
unions but not marry 32
There should be no legal recognition of a gay
couple’s relationship 23
Not sure 2

Would you support or oppose banning assault weapons?

Support 54
Oppose 37
Not sure 10%

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the National Rifle Association?

Favorable 44
Unfavorable 43
Not sure 13

Do you support or oppose the executive orders President Obama issued on guns this week?

Support 46
Oppose 40
Not sure 14
(MoE: ±3%)

The numbers on same sex marriage are actually down slightly from PPP’s pre-election poll that found Minnesotan’s favoring outright legalization 49-41.

Either way, the long term trends on this issue dictate that two years from now those numbers are almost certain to be a few more points favorable to the legalization side. And you can see by the number of people who are open to civil unions that many of the people who are against gay marriage probably won’t react negatively if it’s legalized.

At an absolute minimum, there are no excuses for not passing civil unions in this legislative session. And if the DFL majorities have any balls at all, they will forgo the half measures and straight-up make same sex marriage legal.

As it concerns guns, the NRA is not viewed that bad in the state, with a better approval spread than most of the Minnesota Republican politicians PPP tested in this poll. President Obama’s recent actions on guns is slightly more popular than the NRA is. And an assault weapons ban is even more popular.

♣ Pete Hegseth is an idiot.