Poll: Franken popular with DFLers, but many undecided
A new Minnesota Public Radio News/Humphrey Institute Poll indicates DFL Senate hopeful Al Franken poses a tougher re-election threat to Republican Sen. Norm Coleman than any of the other Democrats who want Coleman's job.
The poll in no way predicts what will happen at the Feb. 5 caucuses. But it does indicate that if the election were held right now, Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken would be in a statistical dead heat.
It shows Coleman beating DFLer Mike Ciresi by five points. And it gives Coleman double digit leads over the two lesser known DFL contenders; Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer and Jim Cohen who dropped out of the race Friday.
"We were very surprised by how far ahead Al Franken is of Mike Ciresi and the rest of the campaign," said University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs Professor Lawrence Jacobs, who directed the poll.
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In fact, even now that the February 5 precinct caucuses have passed, we still don't know exactly how much support the various Senate candidates have, since there were straw polls in only scattered precincts.
Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer did much, much better than Mike Ciresi. Franken clearly has more name-recognition (and a lot more money) than Jack does, but Franken also has even more negatives than Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.
What excites me about Jack are his insights about security, war, climate change, and how they all interrelate. In all those issues, Franken leaves me absolutely cold. Franken was too slow to understand Iraq, still doesn't understand Iran, still thinks nuclear power is a good solution to global warming, etc.
I hope the state convention delegates figure out that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer would provide the leadership that the Senate clearly needs. We need to stop this silly cult of the celebrity. Supporting Franken just looks a lot like jumping on a bandwagon just before it goes off a cliff. We deserve better.
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