It’s important to note that, in the flood of polls, the ones that can be most significant are those reflecting a trend or that show a huge shift — and a new poll shows a big shift in the battleground state of Minnesota:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opened up a commanding lead in Minnesota over Republican John McCain, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.
The poll, conducted last week among 1,084 likely voters, found that 55 percent support Obama, while 37 percent back McCain.
That’s a huge difference from the last Minnesota Poll, conducted in September, which showed the race dead even, with each candidate backed by 45 percent of likely voters. The new poll shows that Obama’s surge in the state can be attributed to voters’ belief in his ability to deal with the nation’s worsening economy, his performance in the first presidential debate and an increase in the number of Minnesotans who call themselves Democrats.
The increase in Democrats would come from new voters, independent voters or who decided to make the jump into partisan waters and, most likely in a smaller numbers, Republicans who jumped ship and changed their party registration altogether.
Obama appears comfortably ahead among men, women, and voters of all ages and educational attainment.
The poll’s findings come at a time when polls in several other battleground states and nationally are showing a sudden and significant shift to Obama. Gallup’s daily national tracking poll released Friday showed Obama leading McCain by 7 percentage points.
This and other polls will be interesting to watch the next 10 days: this week there will be a second McCain-Obama debate, the McCain campaign is going negative in a big way, and the Obama campaign is launching a preemptive strike with a major TV ad. Four months can be an eternity where a campaign stumble, new info about a candidate, a gaffe and — most importantly — sudden events outside the control of campaigns can dramatically alter voters’ previously-polled preferences.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.