True North

• Death
• Taxes
• The sun will rise in the east
• The Vikes pass defense will be as bad as the Vikes pass offense
• The Minnesota Poll will come riding to the rescue of DFL candidates in need

DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken has moved into his first solid lead over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll. The survey, conducted Tuesday through Thursday by Princeton Survey Research Associates International among 1,084 likely Minnesota voters, shows Franken leading Coleman 43 to 34 percent.

(Recall the Poll’s attempt to resuscitate Patty Wetterling two years ago.)

Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies emailed this around this morning…

The reality is that since mid-July there have been 11 public polls conducted on the race for the United States Senate in Minnesota. During that time, all but 3 of those polls have shown Norm Coleman leading Al Franken in the race for the U.S. Senate.

Of the last 5 polls that have been conducted, Norm Coleman has held leads in each and every poll–including the most recent KSTP/SurveyUSA poll that has Norm up by 10 points.
….
In other words, the sample methodology used by the Star Tribune skews the results in favor of Al Franken because they significantly, and statistically, oversampled Democrats in their sample size.
….
Based on our own internal polling, as well as the trend averages of public polls over the past month, it is my opinion that we hold a narrow, but statistically significant lead going into the final weeks of the campaign. 

This race is by no means over, but, clearly you can feel confident that the Star Tribune poll is an outlier of outliers–and that the overall strength of this campaign is positive, and looking even more positive as we move forward.

Cross-posted at Truth Vs. The Machine. Comments welcome.