Last night in the Kos' Election Diaries, your attention was drawn to a Survey USA/KSTP poll that showed Michele Bachmann currently running nine points ahead of her Dem opponent Jim Graves in this year's race. The Minnesota Progressive Project blog contacted a reliable source familiar with the Graves campaign who offered the following information about polling...
A Greenberg Quinlan poll commissioned by the Graves campaign was conducted on Oct. 3-4. It shows the following:
Bachmann: 47
Graves: 45
That result is in line with other polls conducted this year:
June 12-14: Bachmann 48, Graves 43
August 29-30: Bachmann 48, Graves 46
October 3-4: Bachmann 47, Graves 45
The source concludes: the KSTP poll showing Bachmann up by nine points "appears to be nothing but an aberration."
Let's hope so. But here's something else you need to know about the KSTP/SurveyUSA polling:
(CONTINUED)
At the beginning of September, a SurveyUSA/KSTP poll reported that "an amendment to define marriage in Minnesota as between one man and one woman is today favored to pass 50% to 43%."
But in the same month, Public Policy Polling (PPP) found a virtual tie on the very same issue:
PPP's newest poll on the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Minnesota finds it virtually tied, with 48% of voters supporting the ban to 47% who oppose it.
Which polling oufit was getting it right? The one that showed the "no gay marriage" lobby seven points ahead, or the one that showed a virtual tie on the issue?
Let's see. Later in September, the Minneapolis Star Tribune poll showed "support the amendment: 49%--against the amendment 47%."
A PPP poll conducted at the beginning of October and released on October 8 reported:
"support the amendment: 46% --against the amendment: 49%."
It seems clear that the SurveyUSA/KSTP poll was the outlier on the gay marriage amendment. So their result showing Bachmann with a comfortable lead over Graves may be an outlier, too.
And: the Minnesota Progressive Project's Dan Burns points out that DCCC has decided to get into this race this very week, to support the Graves campaign. Would they devote their considerable resources toward winning this race, at this moment--if their numbers showed that Bachmann was far ahead?
ACTION LINK: Fight the crazy and the lies and the bigotry, however you can. Donate to Jim Graves' effort to stop Bachmann:
https://secure.actblue.com/...
LINK: The SurveyUSA/KSTP poll. One interesting thing..."Bachmann's lead comes entirely from men"...she's losing women voters. Nine per cent undecided...
http://kstp.com/...
Next: Bachmann fundraising continues to astonish. From Brian Lambert at the MinnPost:
(So far this year) Bachmann's fundraising haul likely exceeds the combined amount raised by all of the major party candidates in the other eight U.S. Senate and House races in (Minnesota.) … While capable of raising enormous sums of money, Bachmann's fundraising apparatus is expensive to maintain. As MPR News reported last month, Bachmann's campaign has spent on average about 16 cents of every dollar raised on bringing in more cash.” You’d almost think fund-raising is why she’s in Congress.
There's evidence of that. Bachmann raised $4.5 millions dollars for this year's re-election bid in just three months. Despite this, she's still telling supporters that she desperately needs more money. From an email she sent out yesterday:
...your continued support has never been more important. The hyper-liberals at the DCCC are working day and night to defeat us, and we need to fight back. The fastest way to join our campaign is by making an online donation.
Won't you please give my campaign "a boost" by making a donation of $25, $50, $100 or more?
God bless,
-Michele
P.S. Fellow Conservative -- the DCCC is threatening to destroy the very values which you and I believe so strongly in. We will never be able to compete with their millions but with your donation we will be able to fight back and spread our conservative message across Minnesota. Please make your most generous contribution right away.
That's pretty shameless, telling people that you really need their $25 bucks when you're already sitting on more than $4.5 million and nearly twenty per cent of every dollar they've given you goes to more fundraising. But no one can doubt: the lie
works.
http://www.minnpost.com/...
Next: We suspected Bachmann's wild charge was BS--and by God and as usual, it was:
Receiving the controversial HPV vaccine does not make young girls more likely to have sex, a new study says.
Human papillomavirus is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the U.S., and it can lead to several types of cancer. But there is political resistance to the HPV vaccine, in part because of fears that girls will become more promiscuous if they've been vaccinated...
...But fears of increased promiscuity are unfounded, according to a study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics...
Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum were playing "religious right/hate big government" politics with the lives of young girls. They excoriated GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry for mandating the vaccine in Texas. Perry responded that he was trying to do the right thing in order to prevent cancer in young women.
The appearance of this study in Pediatrics arrives to late to help Perry. But it's not too late to ask Bachmann if Perry did the right thing--if she still opposes a government cancer prevention program that doesn't encourage promiscuity.
http://thehill.com/...