If this is how we’re going to cover polls I am going to shoot myself in the face*

OK, not really. But I’ll want to.

Maybe you care (I hope you don’t) but our Minnesota blogosphere is freaking out over SUSA’s latest poll on the state’s Presidential and Senate elections.

The poll shows Barack Obama only up by one point (most other polls have him up by up by 8-12 points) and Norm Coleman leading Al Franken by 12 in the Senate race (others show Coleman up by 2-6 points).

Then, nationally, I watched “Good Morning America” lead with their ABC/Washington Post poll as the TOP STORY today. (Obama up by 6 nationally, a “virtual dead heat” according to their all-important news ticker).

I’m starting to understand the phenomenon. (Seth Colter Walls blogs about the idea of super charged poll reading at the Huffington Post after interviewing prominent pollster John Zogby). Whether this race is a dead heat or not, it will be reported as one. If a poll shows a statistically significant lead for any candidate (usually 5-6 points or more) it will be followed by some sign of “trouble” in a particular demographic (“He’s not holding the Mongolian-American yak importers!”) The networks and cable need this to be close or else they’re going to have nothing to talk about. More important, they’ll lose LOTS of money.

As far as SUSA’s Minnesota poll goes, maybe it’s an outlier and maybe it isn’t. So far, it looks like one (their northeastern Minnesota cross tabs are dead wrong … I just don’t buy it). The next few will prove that definitively. But if we’re going to talk about every one of these polls like they were our blood pressure numbers then gradually they WILL BECOME our blood pressure numbers.

Let’s start talking about policy proposals. Poll numbers will move where they’ll move, but at least people will know what the heck is actually going on.