Because lots of people are ditching the DFL for nominal independence even though they still mostly vote Democrat. The Republican number was what, 30%? Up from the 20s? A good trend but nothing like a guarantee of statewide success. The past several elections have shown that Minnesota can swing both ways and it swung badly against us in 2004.
Drawing the wrong conclusions from 2004 like most of the MN analysists. The Mn GOP won 4 of 8 Congress seats in 2004. The only reason they lost MN House seats is the State GOP sat on their butts and let the DFL out hussle them. I saw the DFL canidate for the MN House 5 times on my door step. Did not even get even a flyer from the Incumbent Republican because he felt so secure in his seat.
GOP was lazy, the Dems were hungry after geting beat again and again since 1994. Let us see if the GOP learned their lesson in 2004. Looking at the action on the ground, sure looks like the GOP is hungrier then the DFL. Think the same dynamic is at work and that is what you are seeing in the MN poll.
The State DFL is so convinced by the manufactured "Everyone hates Bush" polls they seem pretty over confident of the win. That a bad mistake. I suspect a lot of self styled Political Analysis are going to be gobbling for excuses the day after election day in Nov.
We keep telling you all that manipulating the sample in these polls to get the a pretedermined result is going to turn around and bite you all on the butt. Simply no intellectually valid reason to take a 51-48% 2004 nation wide vote result and suddenly start polling 27% R/38%D/35% Ind. Perfect example of garbage in/garbage out analysis.
Base all your conclusion on fraudlent data, you are likely to come up with fraudlent conclusions.