Minnesota for Romney?

For those Minnesotans worried about the poll released over the weekend that shows Minnesota has slid over to the Romney column, this should be noted: the only poll showing such a slide is one released by the Rasmussen polling organization and that poll should be looked at with some skepticism.
by Charlie Leck

I had lunch at the Legion yesterday, with an old friend who is a member there. It's not a very comfortable place for a liberal -- or progressive, as I prefer to call myself -- to have a conversation. So, I just try to keep my mouth shut (and all who know me know how difficult that is). FOX News is always on the telly and it's always turned up a bit because the majority of diners in the place are a little on the hard-of-hearing side. As I tried to enjoy whatever little flavor there was in my Tomato Florentine soup (on the blackboard they had written it out as Floratine), two disturbing stories blared out of the FOX News show...

1. The Des Moines Register, in Iowa, has endorsed Romney for the presidency. Bad news! That paper has great influence in Iowa and is highly respected all around the nation by newspaper people. It's the first time in forty years that the paper has endorsed a Republican for our land's highest office.
2. Minnesota is back in play according to FOX, because a Rasmussen poll has shown Romney with a slight lead here while CNN has Obama up by three points. This news didn't bother me as much and I'll explain why below...

I rate the Rasmussen polling organization very low on the polling accuracy batting average chart. They are typically weighted to the Republican side and are one of the least dependable polls in the nation.

I have told you here, many times, about Nate Silver and his remarkable success in predicting election results state by state (only missed in one state in 2008 – Indiana). He calms my fears in Minnesota by continuing to predict about an 97 percent certainty that Obama will win the state. Here’s a blog he posted Sunday about the Minnesota presidential race.

If you’re interested in this kind of thing, you should follow his FiveThirtyEight blog in the New York Times between now and Election Day or the day after.

Let it be known here, that Silver has currently got Virginia in the Obama column, though he agrees it is very, very close there. He also still has Colorado, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin Nevada and New Hampshire going for Obama.

This is going to be a very, very close race – no doubt about that – however, it still looks like Obama is going to prevail. I'll be biting my finger nails on Election Night.

P.S. Rasmussen has just released an Ohio poll that shows the state has gone over to the Romney side. I always discount Rasmussen about 6 Republican points when I look at their results. That keep Obama in the lead.

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