Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Klobuchar Formidable

Amy Klobuchar is overwhelmingly popular and would cruise to reelection at this point pretty much no matter who her Republican opponent was.

Klobuchar's approval rating is 59% with only 29% of voters disapproving of her. She is universally well liked by the Democratic base, sporting an 87/5 approval spread within her own party. Independents also approve of her by a greater than 2:1 margin, 62/29. And although only 26% of Republicans think she's doing a good job that's still a good deal above average for crossover popularity during a time when GOP voters have about as dim a view of Democrats as they possibly could.

Klobuchar leads a quintet of hypothetical Republican challengers by margins ranging anywhere from 10 to 18 points. Her closest competitor is Governor Tim Pawlenty, who she leads 53-43. She gets a whooping 97% of the Democratic vote against him, while Pawlenty benefits from a pretty unified base as well with 92% of the GOP vote. Klobuchar also cleans up with independents against him, leading 55-38.

Pawlenty gets 1% of the Democratic vote against Klobuchar. It makes you wonder how someone who can only pull 1% of the Democratic vote in his own state is going to have enough appeal across party lines nationwide to win a Presidential contest.

Faring next best against Klobuchar and the only one of the Republicans who voters in the state have a positive opinion of is Norm Coleman, who trails 54-40. He does worse than Pawlenty because he gets only 85% of the Republican vote and because he trails by 22 points with independents. Still Coleman's 43/42 favorability spread has to be at least a little bit encouraging to him. The last time PPP looked at Coleman, which was July 2009, his favorability was 38/52. He appears to have recovered a fair amount from the dip his poll numbers took due to the perception that he was a sore loser. That bodes well if he does make another run for office sometime in the future.

Michele Bachmann trails Klobuchar 56-39 and is extremely unpopular with voters in the state. Only 37% have a favorable opinion of her to 51% with an unfavorable one, and her deficit against Klobuchar with independents is a remarkable 26 points. She has basically no appeal beyond the Republican base and as a result it seems unlikely she'll ever have a much higher platform than serving in the House.

Klobuchar also leads Congressman Erik Paulsen 52-34 and Gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer 56-38. For now it doesn't appear likely this will be a competitive race in 2012.

Full results here

1 comment:

  1. This is only a bit better than where Feingold was last year. Not to say she is as vulnerable as Feingold turned out to be, but if I were at the NRSC I wouldn't be scratching MNSen of my hit list either.

    ReplyDelete