Poll: Republican Doug Burgum Dominating Democrat Marvin Nelson in Gubernatorial Race 69-28

North Dakota doesn’t get a lot of political polling even in the most active and competitive of cycles, and the 2016 cycle (outside of a hot Republican gubernatorial primary which concluded in June) wasn’t one of those.

Still, the folks at Survey Monkey are running a rolling seven-day polling average for 12 state gubernatorial races, including North Dakota’s competition between Republican Doug Burgum and Democrat Marvin Nelson.

Their results, not surprisingly, show Burgum dominating:

You can get some background on the numbers here. They apparently didn’t include Libertarian candidate Marty Riske in their questions.

I’m not that familiar with Survey Monkey’s polling, and they don’t have a lot of details out about methodology, but this does at least pass the smell test.

If I’d been asked to guess where this race was at my numbers would have been within the margin of error of these.

Meanwhile, the candidates have each released their closing television ads. Burgum’s focuses on North Dakota’s opportunities. “North Dakota’s a special place, with amazing resources and people,” the candidate says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOvdP5SpJ7o&feature=youtu.be

Nelson’s, meanwhile, blasts Burgum for supporting charter schools and suggests Burgum wants to spend $100 million on “awards and prizes” instead of Medicaid.

“Even I’m not that liberal,” Nelson quips.

https://www.facebook.com/nelsonfornd/videos/1769266706656844/