There has been a lot of hand wringing about, "How in the world could Minnesota elect Michelle Bachmann?" Look, I hate Michelle Bachmann and all she stands for, but let's get a little perspective here.
First of all -- she is the incumbent, so some people in her district already once voted for her. Second, pre-Hardball she was actually a big GOP national campaign surrogate for McCain. She was on the air all of the time! Obviously the GOP felt her district was so safe that she could waste time saying stupid thing on TV.
Third, once Tinklenberg was in play, Bachmann loaded the air with commercials accusing him of past corruption. These ads were never directly answered by any TV ads that I saw.
But the key reason the Katherine Harris wannabe won? Do the math:
Bachmann's district consists of all or portions of Wright, Sherburne, Stearns, Anoka and Washington counties. (UPDATE: And Benton County) Very Republican territory. How Republican?
Let's go to the numbers reported by CNN (excuse the rounding off).
Coleman/Franken/Barkley breakdowns in these counties:
Wright -- 51-29-20%
Sherburne 51-30-18%
Stearns - 46-34-19%
Anoka -- 46-37-17%
Benton -- 44-34-21
Wash. -- 47-37-15%
Total Votes for Coleman: 246,000 or so
Total Votes for Franken: 181,000 or so
Total Votes for Barkley: 91,000 or so
Coleman got 47.5% of the vote to Franken's 34.9% to Barkley's 17.6%.
Splitting Barkley's vote evenly (8.8% to each), we would get:
56.3% Coleman
43.7% Franken
(Similarly, if you just added up the raw vote of Coleman and Franken, it is about 246,000 Coleman votes, 181,000 Franken votes, a 57.6 to 42.4% GOP win).
Bachmann won the district 46-44-10%, so if you split the Independent's 10% and give 5% to each, you would get 51-49% Bachmann. Or if you take the raw vote of:
Bachmann: 187,818
Tink: 175,789
and ignore the independent entirely, you get 51.6%-48.4% GOP.
Lesson: If Tinklenberg (lost by 2%) performs as well as Franken (lost by 12+%) in these same counties, Tink loses by a much larger margin.
But wait! Let's not look at the district's reaction to a mediocre candidate like Al Franken. Let's look at the district's reaction to the best candidate of 2008 -- President-Elect Barack Obama.
Wright Cty -- 58-40 McCain
Sherburne -- 58-40 McCain
Stearns -- 53-46 McCain
Benton -- 54-44 McCain
Anoka -- 50-48 McCain
Washington -- 52-47 Obama
Obama lost these counties about 276,000 to 239,000
McCain 53.6% versus Obama 46.4%.
Tinklenberg, with a late start, lost by about 2%.
Obama lost by 7+%
Franken lost by 12+%.
I would say that many, many GOP and independent voters did their job and voted against Michelle Bachmann. The district is just real, real heavy GOP, and it took a slightly better candidate than Tinklenberg and a slightly better campaign response to Bachmann's negative ads to get that final couple percent of the vote.