Al Franken leads Minnesota's U.S. Senate race

by julianw | August 22, 2008 at 02:32 pm

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Al Franken -- former writer and performer for Saturday Night Live and author of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right -- is now running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate, and he's doing pretty well: a Minnesota Public Radio News/ Humphrey Institute poll released today has Franken 1% ahead of Republican Norm Coleman. Franken, whose latest campaign ad is narrated by a talking fish, is way funnier than Coleman, and he may even be a better person. That's for the people of Minnesota to decide.

The poll found 41 percent support Al Franken and 40 percent support Norm Coleman.

It's a survey of 763 likely Minnesota voters between Aug. 7 and 17. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

"Coming into this poll, I was frankly assuming that Al Franken was in trouble," said University of Minnesota political scientist Lawrence Jacobs, who directed the poll.