2010 Minnesota Governor - Emmer vs. Dayton vs. Horner

11/2/10, 8:08am -- The final polling is close, but Dayton is the favorite.  However, it is important to note that he underperformed his polling in the primary significantly.

10/9/10 -- Dayton's problem is that he's a well-known quantity, but not a particularly well-liked quantity. Remember, in 2006, an outstanding Democratic year, Dayton believed that he was too unpopular to win re-election. It looks like this is starting to manifest in the polls here.

Countering this is the fact that the Independent candidate in Minnesota typically performs around as well as his polls suggest he should on Election Day (which rarely happens in other states), so 40 to 45 percent may, in fact, win this race.  Still, Dayton underperformed his polls substantially in the primary; there may be a similar phenomenon here.

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Today there is probably no state more firmly associated with the Democratic Party than Minnesota. Yet for most of this state's history, there was no Democratic Party to speak of in the state. The state was dominated by Republicans, although they were Republicans decidedly from the Party's progressive wing.

After the New Deal, these Progressives increasingly aligned themselves with the Democratic Party. When Hubert Humphrey fused the party with the Farmer-Labor alliance, it created the modern DFL, which has given us some of the most memorable standardbearers for liberalism in our time: Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone. Things had gotten so bad for the state’s Republicans that they actually renamed themselves the "Independent Republicans" for a time.

But like much of the Upper Midwest, the state moved toward the Republicans in the 1990s; it is only a few points more Democratic than the rest of the country today. At the same time, the state retained a quirky character: It is, after all, the state that gave us Governor Ventura and Senator Franken.

The Democrats haven't won a Governor’s race since 1986, including a heartbreaking (for Democrats) loss in 2006 when Attorney General Mike Hatch, who had led in most polls throughout the year, melted down at the last minute after his ticketmate was unable to identify a type of ethanol, and after he referred to a reporter as a "Republican whore." Tim Pawlenty won by a point.

This year, Democrats nominated former Senator Mark Dayton, who retired rather than run for re-election in 2006. Republicans nominated state Rep. Tom Emmer. Tom Horner has the Independence Party nod, which has played spoiler in previous elections (and which won in 1998).