Minnesota Miscellaneous

-Voters in Minnesota are not terribly into home state politicians Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann running for President next year. Only 28% think Pawlenty should seek the White House to 17% who think he should run for the Senate and 45% who think he shouldn't run for anything. There's even less interest in a Bachmann Presidential run- 14% think she should seek that office to 23% who think she should run for the Senate, 10% who think she should run for reelection to her House seat, and 47% who just want her to go away.

Pawlenty at least has some level of interest in his running for President from the party base- 57% of Republicans think he should run. GOP voters though would much rather Bachmann ran for the Senate (43% think she should do that) than President (which only 26% think she should aim for.) We'll have numbers looking at how Pawlenty and Bachmann would do when matched against Amy Klobuchar and Barack Obama in the state over the next two days.

-The buyer's remorse about the results of last year's Gubernatorial elections that we've found in midwestern states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania appears to be a Republican only phenomenon. Mark Dayton has a very solid 51/38 approval rating with more GOP voters (12%) happy with the job he's doing than Democrats (6%) who are unhappy. Independents think he's doing a good job by a 48/39 spread as well. In a hypothetical rematch he would defeat Tom Emmer 48-36, quite a contrast to his less than 1 point victory last fall.

Voters are siding with Dayton in his battle with legislative Republicans over raising taxes on the wealthy. Only 32% of voters want a 'cuts only' solution to balancing the budget compared to 63% who support increased taxes on the wealthiest 2% of voters in the state.

-Speaking of that Republican legislature it might be a short lived phenomenon. GOP legislators have a remarkably bad 29/58 favorability spread. The DFL folks aren't popular either at a 39/45 favorability, but they still lead the Republicans 49-40 on the generic legislative ballot.

-Voters in the state are about as evenly divided as they could be on gay marriage. 46% support a constitutional amendment to ban it, 47% are opposed to amending the constitution in that manner. As usual the generational divide on the issue is staggering- seniors support a ban by a 57/34 margin while every other age group opposes it. There aren't a lot of policy issues I would say this about but public opinion on gay marriage is shifting so quickly that it wouldn't be surprise me if opposition to this amendment grows by 5 or 6 points in the 17 months between now and next November's election. My guess is that an anti-gay ballot initiative that polls as a tie in May 2011 fails in November 2012.

Full results here