About half of Minnesotans approve of the job Sen. Norm Coleman is doing as senator, according to a new poll.

The Survey USA poll taken Feb. 15-17 and released today, found that the Republican Coleman’s job approval rating was at 49 percent.

The poll of 600 adults, sponsored by KSTP-TV, and Austin-based KAAL and Duluth-based WDIO, did not measure support for Coleman’s DFL opponents, led by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Mike Ciresi and Al Franken.

Coleman’s approval rating is about the same as it was in the Survey USA poll last month (51 percent, and both polls had margins of sampling error of about 4 percentage points). His rating is up from the summer, when he hit a low of 43 percent job approval in the poll.

The new poll also found that Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s job approval is 61 percent — unchanged since the January poll.

Here’s what the polls are saying on the weekend before Super Tuesday.

First the Republicans. Sen. John McCain continues to run strong and, if the polls reflect the actual results, he’s likely to win far more delegates than Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee.

Of the 11 Super Tuesday states with recent polls, McCain leads or is in a dead heat in 10 of them. The only one he seems certain to lose is Massachusetts, where former Gov. Romney holds a 25-point lead.

Romney generally runs second to McCain, except in three southern states — Missouri, Oklahoma and Alabama — where Huckabee is running a close second to the Arizona senator.

In the five winner-take all state with current polling, McCain leads in all them.

In New York (101 delegates), New Jersey (52) and Connecticut (27), McCain is up by more than 20 points.

In his home state of Arizona (53 winner-take-all), in Illinois (70), and in Oklahoma (41) he leads by more 10 points. And in Missouri (58 winner-take-all), he’s ahead of Huckabee by 7 points.

California, with 173 delegates at stake, is essentially a dead heat. That’s good news for Romney, who had been trailing in the polls. But surveys since the GOP debate at the Reagan Library in California last Wednesday have been either a tie or well within the margin of sampling error, indicating that Romney has been surging.

Romney also has a good chance of picking up some of the smaller (delegate count) states in the west, including Utah, Montana and perhaps Colorado.

Currently, McCain leads in the delegate race, with 93 won so far. Romney has 77 and Huckabee has 40.

On the Democratic side, the “national primary” looks extremely close between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

They are each running well ahead in the states they represent in the Senate — Clinton in New York and Obama in Illinois (Clinton’s native state). But Obama is running stronger in New York (trailing by 20 points) than Clinton is in Illinois (where she trails by 30 points).

That’s important because Democrats apportion all their delegates based on each candidate’s vote total in a state, so Obama stands to win a fair amount of New York’s 281 delegates. Illinois has 185 delegates at stake.

Georgia (103 delegates) is the only other state that Obama holds a significant lead, nearly 15 points.

Clinton, meanwhile, enjoys double-digit leads in Tennessee (85 delegates) and Massachusetts (121), although it’s unclear whether the Sen. Ted and Caroline Kennedy endorsements will boost Obama in the state.

In the other states with recent polling, the gap between Obama and Clinton is 6 points or less — meaning that they’re essentially dead heats. Those states are Connecticut (60), Missouri (88), Alamaba (60) and Arizona (67).

Ditto for the most delegate-rich state — California, with 441.

The fact that California is a toss-up shows that the momentum is shifting to Obama. As late as a couple of weeks ago, Clinton had double-digit leads in most California polls.

Currently, Clinton leads in the delegate race. Although Obama has won more pledged delegates in state primaries and caucuses (63 to Clinton’s 48), Clinton has more delegates supporting her thanks to the endorsements of Superdelegates (party leaders, members of Congress and the like). AP has Clinton at 261 total delegates, and Obama at 190.

Back in the summer, Sen. John McCain was on the verge of slipping down into single digits in New Hampshire polls. In July, August and September, he polled 10 to 12 percent in four consecutive polls by different pollsters.

Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy in N.H. (Photo by Andrew Foxwell)

Now he’s leading the pack with triple the level of support he had in the summer.

Two polls released over the weekend show him with 33 percent (CNN/WMUR/UNH) and 35 percent (Concord Monitor). In both polls, the Arizona Republican holds a 6-point lead over Mitt Romney.

Iowa winner Mike Huckabee still doesn’t seem to be a threat to win New Hampshire, where there are fewer evangelical voters. Huckabee finishes in third place in the Concord Monitor poll with 13 percent, ahead of Rudy Giuliani. In the CNN poll, Giuliani finishes in third with 14 percent, just ahead of Huckabee.

Those two polls show the Democratic race a dead heat between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. It’s 34-33 percent for Obama in the Concord Monitor poll and 33-33 in the CNN poll.

Obama in N.H. this weekend (Photo by Lauren Melcher)

John Edwards lags at 23 percent in the Concord poll and 20 percent in CNN’s.

A third weekend poll, by American Research Group, has McCain up by 14 and Obama up by 12 points. But this organization regularly produces wild results. It showed Clinton up by 9 on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, although it also showed Huckabee up by 5 in that poll.

An interesting dynamic to watch in this race is the battle between McCain and Obama for the independent vote. In New Hampshire, independent voters can choose to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primaries. In 2000, they were drawn to the Republican contest and were the key to McCain’s victory over George Bush.

But this year, many independent voters are indicating they’ll vote in the Democratic primary for Obama. If that happens in large numbers, it could bleed votes away from McCain.

Polls in Iowa continue to show Mike Huckabee in the lead, but his margin has narrowed in the past week.

In the Democratic race, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be making a comeback.

Sen. John McCain

Last week, Huckabee led in the last four polls, with leads ranging from 5 points to 16 points. Now, looking at the six most recent polls, his biggest lead is 8 points — in ABC/Washington Post, CNN and American Research Group. The American Research Group poll was the most recent, taken Dec. 16-19.

The most striking thing about that poll is Sen. John McCain’s amazing surge — from 9 percent at the end of November to 20 percent now. It also shows Mitt Romney in freefall, down to 17 percent.

But Strategic Vision (Dec. 16-18), showed Romney doing much better. He had 25 percent, to Huckabee’s 31 percent, and McCain was way back at 8 percent. Strategic Vision also had Fred Thompson at 16 percent, far higher than any other poll had him.

And one poll, Insider Advantage (Dec. 16-17), had Romney in first, by a statistically insignificent 3 points over Huckabee.

Among Democrats, Clinton appears to have made up ground on Sen. Barack Obama. A week ago, Obama held leads of 8 and 9 points over Clinton. Now, the average of the six most recent polls shows the race a tie. Clinton comes in first in three polls (American Research Group, CNN and Rasmussen), with insignificant leads of 2 to 4 points, and Obama lands in first place in the other three (Strategic Vision, Insider Advantage and ABC/Wash Post), with equally insignificant leads of 1 to 4 points.

In New Hampshire, Romney continues to hold the lead, but it’s slipping. Last week, he led in the last four polls by 12-15 points. Now, in the four most recent polls, he holds leads of 3, 4 and 7 points, and the remaining poll (American Research Group) is a tie with McCain.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Huckabee’s support — which is virtually unchanged at about 10 percent.

Among Democrats in New Hampshire, the race remains just as confusing as it was a week ago. Clinton leads in three of the five most recent polls. But in the last two, one was a tie and Obama held a slight edge in the other — just a 2-point lead.

If you need proof that immigration has become one of the chief issues in the presidential campaign in Iowa, just look at Mitt Romney’s new ad.

When he decided he needed to stick a spoke in the wheels of Mike Huckabee’s fast-charging campaign, Romney put up an ad attacking Huckabee’s record on immigration.

The immigration issue is rising in the polls and is cropping up more and more on the campaign trail, as voters seek answers from the candidates. And that has prompted a number of news organizations to explore the issue in the last week or so.

In this story published Sunday, the Baltimore Sun described the issue as a prairie fire turned “inferno, with potentially explosive impact on the 2008 election.”

Already, it has become the defining issue in the battle between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee for first place in Iowa’s Jan. 3 presidential caucuses. But while immigration is drawing attention as a Republican issue - driven by attack and response ads on TV - it’s not solely a concern of Republican voters.

Immigration is also a worry for a significant, and possibly growing, number of Democrats and independents, too.

That’s a change from October, when a University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll of likely caucus-goers found that only 2.4 percent of Democrats picked immigration as the single most important issue. Compare that with the Iraq war at 34.9 percent and health care at 23.2 percent.

Republicans cited immigration much more often, but it was still only the fourth most mentioned issue. Terrorism was the number one issue at 21.9 percent, followed by the economy (15.8), the Iraq War (15.5) and immigration came next at 13.7 percent.

But a Rassmussen Reports poll of 789 likely Republican caucus-goers taken on Dec. 10 found that immigration was the top issue at 24 percent, just ahead of national security at 22 percent.

A story published Tuesday by the Iowa Independent, working collaboratively with the Huffington Post, presented a similar, anecdotal finding: “In a series of phone interviews conducted by Huffington Post’s OffTheBus project, 37 of Iowa’s Republican county chairs were asked to name the issues most important to GOP caucus-goers this year. Almost universally, immigration and social issues were mentioned. Asked about the Iraq War, many county chairs downplayed its significance.”

The Rasmussen poll of Democrats found that 5 percent considered immigration the top issue. That’s twice the level as the Hawkeye Poll, but still tiny compared with the 31 percent who cited the Iraq War.

Still, when a group of Iowans question candidates, they invariably ask what the candidate is going to do to stop illegal immigrants from taking away jobs at meat packing plants, in the construction sector and in other employment categories, according to news reports.

A front-page story last week in the New York Times concluded: “Nearly everyone [of the more than two dozen Iowans] interviewed said that none of the political candidates had arrived at a position on immigration that fully satisfied them. In real life, they said, the issues surrounding immigration, both legal and illegal, were far more complicated than bumper sticker slogans or jabs on a debate stage or even the carefully picked language of campaign policy papers.”

The economy, the Iraq War and terrorism are all issues that could swing wildly in importance between now and Election Day 2008, but immigration seems likely to be a reliable and perhaps unforgiving issue.

To learn more about what the candidates have said and how they’ve voted on immigration, go to the “President” page (here) on Politically Connected. When you click on a candidate’s name, you’ll find immigration as one of the issues below their biographical information.

The landscape continues to shift rapidly in Iowa, where recent polls show Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee with gaps over their rivals.

Or, in Obama’s case, maybe not.

Barack Obama

Polling in advance of a caucus is a challenge, because there are a smaller number of caucus-goers than, say, voters in a general election, or even a primary. About 150,000 Democrats and 80,000 Republicans are expected to show up on the night of Thursday, Jan. 3.

Trying to figure out which candidate people support is merely the second task for pollsters. The first task is figuring out who will give up Grey’s Anatomy to do their civic duty.

So it’s not a big surprise that polls are showing a wide spread in results.

In Iowa, for example, Strategic Vision found Obama leading Hillary Rodham Clinton 33 percent to 25 percent, just barely within the poll’s margin of sampling error (The poll was taken 12/08-10; with 600 Likely Voters; with a MoE +/-4.5).

And the Quad City Times had Obama up by 9 points, with 33 percent, to Clinton’s and John Edwards’ 24 percent (12/10-13; 500 LV; MoE 4.5).

But another poll taken at about the same time, by The Hotline, shows the race a tie between Obama and Clinton at 27, with Edwards trailing at 22. (12/07-12; 569 LV; MoE 4)

Finally, Rasmussen has Clinton in the lead 29-26 over Obama, with Edwards again at 22. (12/10; 1106 LV; MoE 3).

On the Republican side, it’s a lot less complicated. It’s Huckabee, Huckabee, Huckabee and Huckabee. His margins range from 5 points (Strategic Vision) to 16 points (Rasmussen) in the last four polls. The big question for Huckabee is whether his newfound popularity will be matched by his supporters actually showing up at caucuses.

Mike Huckabee

Mitt Romney receives 22 to 25 percent support in the polls, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are at about 10 percent, and John McCain is at about 6 percent.

In New Hampshire, it’s a different story, with Romney holding leads of 12 to 15 points in the last four polls (FOX News, Concord Monitor, Rassmussen, Suffolk U/WHDH.) McCain comes in second in three of the four.

But the Democratic race is a muddle in New Hampshire, just as it is in Iowa. Clinton leads by 7 points (Suffolk U/WHDH) and 9 points (FOX), but Obama leads by 1 (Concord) and 3 (Rasmussen).

Nationwide, it’s as it’s always been — Clinton and Giuliani leading their respective fields, although Huckabee now has gained a toehold in one poll — Rasmussen’s 4-day tracking poll, where he holds a 2-point margin over Giuliani.

For more on these and other polls, go to Real Clear Politics, an excellent resource for polls.

In less than two months, voters will begin weeding out the presidential candidates, starting with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and New Hampshire’s still-to-be-scheduled primary.

So here’s a round-up of the latest news from those two key states, starting with Iowa.

This past weekend was a big one for Democrats, with 9,000 activists attending the party’s annual fundraising event — the Jefferson Jackson Dinner — in Des Moines. At the dinner, John Edwards delivered some of the sharpest rhetoric of the night, according to this AP story.

Here’s the Des Moines Register’s account, along with excerpts of the speeches given by the six candidates who attended the dinner.

Mike Huckabee has made big gains in Iowa

The most recent polls show Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton with a very narrow lead over Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards. The University of Iowa’s Hawkeye Poll surveyed likely caucus-goers Oct. 17-24, and it found that Clinton had 29 percent support, while Obama had 27 percent and Edwards had 20 percent. That put all of them within the poll’s margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.5 percent. A Zogby poll taken Nov. 6 had Clinton at 28, Obama at 25, and Edwards at 21. In both polls, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was a long way back, in single digits.

On the Republican side, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney holds a comfortable lead, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is showing signs of surging. The Hawkeye Poll had Romney at 36 percent, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Huckabee both at about 13 percent, followed by former Sen. Fred Thompson at 11 percent. Zogby found similar results: Romeny at 31, Huckabee at 15, Giuliani at 11 and Thompson at 10.

On Friday, the New York Times had a front-page story that explored this surge by Huckabee. The story said that “there is a new sense of possiblity in the Huckabee campaign. It has been fueled in large part by evangelicals, including a politically active home-schooling population, dissatisfied with his better-financed competitors.”

On the Democratic side, Sen. Joe Biden may be trailing in the polls, but he can boast of having earned the first Iowa newspaper endorsement. Here’s the Storm Lake Times editorial from Oct. 20.

In New Hampshire, Romney again holds a significant lead, according to a Boston Globe poll taken Nov. 2-7. It had Romney at 32, Giuliani at 20, Sen. John McCain at 17, and Huckabee at 5. A Marist Poll taken at about the same time found similar numbers.

Clearly, the Huckabee surge hasn’t spread to New Hampshire, but if he beats expectations in Iowa, that could translate into an immediate boost in New Hampshire.

In the Democratic race, Clinton enjoys a larger lead over Obama than she does in Iowa. The Globe had Clinton at 35 and Obama at 21, with Edwards at 15 and Richardson at 10. The Marist Poll had it Clinton 38, Obama 26, Edwards 14 and Richardson at 6.

Meanwhile, it’s still uncertain when New Hampshire voters will go to the polls. Officials there are waiting to see if Michigan’s attempt to jump up in the schedule to Jan. 15 succeeds. If it does, then New Hampshire almost certainly would go before Michigan, possibly holding its primary in December.

A new poll shows Sen. Norm Coleman in a dead heat with Al Franken and Mike Ciresi, the two leading Democratic candidates.

Here’s the poll, taken by SurveyUSA for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

The poll has Coleman at 46 percent when matched against Franken, who has 45 percent. Against Ciresi, Coleman gets 44 percent and Ciresi gets 44 percent.

Other hightlights:

The favorable ratings for all three candidates are low. Coleman’s favorable and unfavorable ratings are about even; Franken’s unfavorables are much higher than his favorables; and Ciresi is still struggling to make himself known.

The gender gap is significant. Coleman runs 11 points better among men than among women vs. Franken. And Coleman runs 15 points better among men than women vs. Ciresi.

Here’s a look back at the Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll taken in September, which included Coleman job approval and candidate image questions, but no horse-race questions.