Freedom Dogs

Would be Senator Al Franken is not exactly riding the high wave of support one often sees after his endorsement. In fact, according to a KSTP poll, he is just shy of "stinkin' up the field" as my football coach shouted at us on particularly bad practice days.

Franken is behind Senator Coleman by 12 points, on a year that we are supposed to believe Republicans might as well just throw in the towel. Conservatives have problems with many of Coleman's key votes in the last 6 years, rightly so, but after all the hand-wringing, most of them are not the sort to sit on them come November. According to the poll:

If no other candidates entered the race, Coleman still holds a substantial lead over Franken. The newest poll shows that Coleman would receive 52 percent of the vote and Franken would receive 40 percent

The margin of error (MOE) in this poll is +/- 4.0 percent.

In the complete breakdown of this poll, the most notable statistic is that Coleman has shored up the support of 89 percent of Republican voters while Franken has 71 percent of DFL support.

That first sentence there brings up an interesting point I seriously doubt we are likely to see this year. But for curiosity sake perhaps, they did the math on an independent... wiat for it... Ventura candidacy. The poll results make me slap my forehead. Hard to believe Jesse could rate 10%, let alone 23%. But there you have it, Norm still holds a 10 point lead after all the fruits and nuts are sorted out.

What is even stranger is how well Ventura would do compared to a few more traditional candidates thrown into the mix...

The new poll shows that Barkley and Ciresi would have far less of an impact on the race.

Head-to-head against Coleman, Ciresi garners about the same as Franken with 40 percent of the vote and Coleman drops a sliver to 50 percent (MOE: =/- 4.1 percent).

Against Coleman and Franken, Barkley pulls in only 8 percent of the vote to Ventura’s 23 percent. When Ciresi replaces Franken on the ballot, Barkley goes down to 6 percent (MOE: =/- 4.1 percent).

So much for Ciresi saving the day should Franken melt down.