Hi FreshH20,

It is a bit perplexing, but the reality is that the support is and has been there recently for all of these stadiums.  The public wants to keep the Vikes and the Twins and they want venues for both teams that will make them competative and provide an entertaining venue to enjoy the sports.  The problem is that the political base of the DFL and the GOP are opposed to the private/public partnership with pro-sports teams necessary to build these venues.  As a result, the polls that are published are basically propoganda intended to groom us into the DFL and GOP way of thinking.  I know that sounds like a far fetched conspiracy theory, but it really is a reality.  It's not really a conspiracy theory more it's the reality of how the political machine works in this country and it's not unique to Minnesota either.  DFL and GOP candidates need their caucuses (which tends to be their political base)to get their parties endorsement and they also need the public support to win in the general election process.  The funny part is that the general public and the political bases of both parties have conflicting objectives and philosophies leading to candidates trying to serve two sets of objects and philosophies.  This conflict leads many political pundits (the mainstream media included) to sponsor polls that are predisposed to a certain answer so that they can claim public support.  There are so many ways to influence the results of a poll that you really have to be carefull about how you read a poll.  You have to color the poll results with the potential agenda of the sponsor, how the target poll audience was created (i.e. sampling) and how the questions were presented and worded.  All of these things will greatly influence the results of the poll.  You also have to consider that polls on this page are "Unscientific" meaning that they probably don't adequetly represent the general public because there have been no measures to create a representative population of poll respondents.  Your simply getting whomever read the poll and responded to it which is likely a skewed view.  If supporters are more passionate about an issue than opponents than more supporters may respond giving the appearance of higher support than really exists. 

Bottom line:  There is public support for the stadiums, but there is not political support. 

You'll go with it because it's results are consistant with your personal beleifs or because you know it to be a sound poll based on who sponsored it, how the sample of participants was created and how the questions were worded and presented to poll participants? 

BTW, these are the most simplistic possible corruption points for any statistical research and there are also many far more technical corruption points that I won't bore you with.  And before you sterotype me as a paranoid conspiracy theorist (which I most certainly am not), I would suggest you dig up a study conducted by the U of M late last year on research ethics that found a high degree of coruption in the research industruty as a result of pressure brought to bear by research sponsors.

As an Anoka County resident, I would be interested in the results of a poll asking if the current plan should proceed.  Since the vast majority of the stadium tax would be paid by county residents  all of the other chatter on this topic is meaninless.  I would predict, at best  that one-third of the residents would support the current measure.

  In short the plan _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Anoka residents for the sake of getting a stadium for the rest of the state 

Keith VandenAvond

Coon Rapids

And if there was any corruption in the MN Poll, I would have expected it to be slanted toward the stadium supporters considering they are the vocal ones, not unlike the pro-smoking ban polls.

Would it?  Again, who sponsored that poll?  The recent poll was conducted by the Star/Trib, I'm not sure about last years.  Ask yourself, "Does the Star/Trib have an opinion on this issue and what is that opinion?"  Ideally, as a news outlet, they wouldn't have an opinion as their roll should be to report the news and not to create the news.  Unfortunately, I think we all realize that the major media outlets have become increasingly more Opinion/Editorial slanted and increasingly less objective journalists.  So again, if the Star/Trib sponsored and had oversight of this poll, what type of a result would you expect?

The questions are pretty cut and dried. While I would have liked to see more than 725 people polled, the results are consistant to last years poll.

Again, how representative of the state is a poll of 725 people.  I have a degree in statistical theory and a career in research.  In theory, the poll can have statistical significance, but the smaller the population, the more work that has to be done to maintain the statistical significance which creates more of an opportunity to influence the results.  A great example of how effective this type of measuring is would be exit polls on election night.  How accurate have they proved?  They've been off by several hundred basis points and they actually have a far greater statistical value because of the geographical nature of the polls from which samples are taken. 

These polls are basically hogwash and intended to do nothing other than be used to influence public opinion and provide leverage in the debate process.  That is my central point here. 

Personally, I can see both sides of the stadium debate.  It's not uncommon for the state and local governments to incent business to build in their community.  There's plenty of examples of including the state and local investment in the Polaris research and development facility built in Forest Lake area.  The stadium issues are admittingly a much grander scale dealing with hundres of millions instead of tens of millions, but the concept is the same.  It's advantageous for a community to attract business as they provide jobs, property tax income, income tax revenue, etc...  On the other hand, it is also a reality that we have limited state resources and the environment, health and human services, education, etc... shouldn't have those resources used up building stadiums.  On the third hand, one can also argue that the loss of those teams will place a greater burden on the limited resources that the state has available to them. 

It really is a complex issue, but our elected officials should be able to figure it out.  The politics that I mentioned in my previous post is really the road block.  My frustration is that our elected officials more concerned with finding a way to re-election than they are finding a way to solve these issues. 

And you are correct, I do tend to be a bit long winded.  Mostly because a two sentance or one paragraph response isn't adequate to really explain the dynamics at hand.