Poll: Governor's race "free-for-all"

A new poll in the Minnesota governor's race shows a "free-for-all," according to the pollster.

Rasmussen Reports' poll, found Republican candidates Tom Emmer and Marty Seifert running "essentially even" with DFLers R.T. Rybak, Mark Dayton and Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

In the survey of 500 likely voters, Minneapolis Mayor Rybak tied state Rep. Seifert and beat state Rep. Emmer by three; former U.S. Sen. Dayton beat Emmer by 3 percentage points but came in one point behind Seifert. The survey showed both men a few percentage points ahead of House Speaker Kelliher.

Those slim differences fall within the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points and are statistically insignificant, the pollster said. The poll found that a huge number of voters haven't decided on a favorite.

Depending the poll's configuration of candidates, the number of undecided voters ranged from 16 percent to 27 percent.

The survey, which included the Independence Party's Tom Horner, also found Republicans besting three other Democrats — former state Rep. Matt Entenza, state Sen. Tom Bakk and state Rep. Tom Rukavina. When asked how they viewed those three DFLers, 40 percent or more of those surveyed said they were "not sure."

None of the match-ups showed Horner getting more than 10 percentage points.

In a January poll, "former senator Mark Dayton was the front-runner on the Democratic side, but now other Democrats are proving to be as competitive as Dayton in match-ups with the GOP candidates," the pollster said.

Rasmussen further said:

Dayton as a former senator remains the best-known of all of the gubernatorial hopefuls. Twenty-two percent (22%) view him very favorably, while 30% have a very unfavorable opinion of him. Just 11% have no opinion, though.

(Rybak) is close behind. He's viewed very favorably by 22% and very unfavorably by 19%, with only 14% who have no view of him.

Kelliher is viewed very favorably by 13% and very unfavorably by 19%. Twenty-one percent (21%) have no opinion of her.

Eleven percent (11%) of Minnesota voters view Emmer very favorably, while eight percent (8%) regard him very unfavorably. For Seifert, very favorables are 14% and very unfavorables 16%.