Minnesota Public Radio Poll Shows Former V.P. Walter Mondale Trailing in Volatile Senate Race

Yahoo News ^ | November 3, 2002

[John Jorsett]

ST. PAUL, Minn., Nov. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- With 10 percent of voters still undecided, former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman has a 6-percentage-point lead over former Vice President Walter Mondale in statewide poll results for Minnesota's U. S. Senate race.

With voter volatility making measurements of the state's public opinion a difficult task, results show Coleman, a Republican, with 47 percent, and Mondale with 41 percent. The poll, conducted for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

Support for other candidates totals just 2 percent, according to the poll conducted Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Oct. 30 through Nov. 1. A total of 625 likely voters participated.

After U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash, Mondale was called from retirement by Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor party for a five-day campaign his supporters have dubbed the "Fritz Blitz."

Poll results "are a reflection of how volatile the race has become since Wellstone's death," says Dave Peters, the Pioneer Press senior editor who oversees the newspaper's polling efforts.

With the crash that killed Wellstone, his wife, daughter and several campaign staffers just 11 days before the election, the state's 2 million voters "had to rethink at least momentarily who they would vote for in the Senate election," Peters says. The count of undecided voters has increased from just 5 percent in the newspaper's September poll.

In addition, 17 percent of respondents said their choice in the Senate race was influenced by a controversial Wellstone memorial service that many considered a political rally.

[Spunky]

ROTFL.

Dumbo's Twin, only he can't fly.

[The Iron Duke]

They seemed so inexplicably detached from what happened

They may have been on some type of anti-depressant. It would explain a lot.

When my father died suddenly while he was out of town, I had trouble sleeping the next night after both the shock and the need to make arrangements. A well meaning neighbor who was a registered nurse gave me something from her little at-home pharmacy. I had no idea what it would do to me. As I had had no sleep for a day and a half and had been unable to eat, it totally zonked me out. I regret I hardly remember anything from the wake.

[CoolCD]

Mondale is debating when the audience will be mainly retired people who don't work on Monday morning. Most people will only get to see it on the evening news in pieces.

[Bahbah]

It is so hard to lose a parent. You have my heartfelt sympathy. As for anti-depressants, they won't kick in for 7 to 10 days (sometimes longer) and they don't make you behave in ways that you otherwise would not, maybe just dull some of the pain.

[putupon]

, 23% of the electorate is either undecided

10 percent still be undecided

I would like to know what % of the undecideds actually vote.

[OldFriend]

I doubt Wellstone's sons will see the error of their ways and will blame everything and everyone but themselves. Sadly, politics has invaded their family's soul and that is the tragedy. They are not the only family with that lack of character.

[oline]

funerally

Love it!

[oline]

Yeah, his name is Tricomo --- always wearing sunglasses -- very strange...

[terilyn]

I thought I read that Tricomo is blind?

That would explain the nice placement of the buttons on his sweater at the Friday night KSTP debate...

[Wolfstar]

Although I did not actually meet him, I campaigned for then-Gov. Bush and was among the crowd of well-wishers seeing him off back to Texas at Long Beach Airport the night before the California primary. Months before then, I began making every attempt to watch every one of his televised speeches and appearances. You are right that his speech-making has improved considerably. He has always done better with "big" one-time speeches rather than the standard stump speech all politicians learn to deliver. I'm sure they get pretty sick of giving the same speech over and over, and George W. seemed to find them particularly trying the more fatigue set in. The President's stump speeches are where he's improved the most. But he really rises to the occasion with the "big" speech. In his first two years, he's already given several very important, even great speeches. What comes to mind immediately are his inaugural address, the speech at the National Prayer Service after 9/11, his address to Congress after 9/11, and his address to the U.N. a couple of months ago.

[oline]

oh -- I didn't know that he was blind (or could be)-- I just thought it was one of those quirky things...

[11th_VA]

This is another race that will not be over Tuesday.

How can it, they have to hand count the new ballots ...