Franken Falling?

In the last 24 hours, two highly-respected firms have released polls showing that Democrats' goal of obtaining 60 Senate seats may be falling from the party's grasp. Rasmussen and Mason-Dixon have very similar numbers showing Democrat Al Franken falling behind in his race against Minnesota incumbent Senator Norm Coleman.

Rasmussen (10/28; 10/22 findings in parenthesis)
Norm Coleman 43 (37)
Al Franken 39 (41)
Dean Barkley 14 (17)

Mason-Dixon (10/27-10/28)
Norm Coleman 42
Al Franken 36
Dean Barkley 12

While I think that both of these pollsters have leaned slightly towards GOP Senate candidates this year, it it is hard to discount these findings, especially because they are so similar. Ras has Franken dropping a couple since last month, with Coleman gaining six points. I think M-D lowballs Franken's support here, but that's just my opinion.

A few days ago, we posted on this race, and commented that Barkley was likely taking more support away from Franken than Coleman. The rationale for my belief is that while there are plenty of anti-incumbent voters ready to toss Coleman out, many of these people probably don't love Franken either for his past writings or sometimes off-the-wall behavior. As a result, some are giving Barkley a second look, which helps explain why he is polling where he is. Mason-Dixon seems to echo this, at least in part:

If Coleman puts daylight between Franken’s numbers and his own on Election Day, he may have Barkley to thank. While he has shored up 89% of voters who identify as Republicans, with only 4% defecting to Barkley’s camp, only about three out of four Democrats say that they support their party nominee, with 17% of Democratic voters favoring the Independence Party candidate over Franken.

I have always believed that Franken would win on Obama's shoulders. But for that to happen, Obama needs to win the state big -- we are talking double digits. While that still may happen, it is not a lock (indeed, this M-D poll has Obama +8, but the last six polls in the state give Obama leads of +12, +19, +15, +19, +5, and +10). I have to believe that if Obama pulls of the double-digit win, Franken will be in the Senate, and if this does not happen, then it speaks to Franken's huge liabilities as a candidate.

If there were one race where Obama cutting a commercial for a candidate would do a lot of good, this is it. However, I am guessing that it has not happened yet because Team Obama does not want to get the candidate to tied up with a controversial figure in Franken. If Democrats want to win this, an Obama-for-Franken ad would be very helpful at this late stage.