At 5.8 percent, the unemployment rate stands well below the national average, and progressive organizers are buoyed by a growing sense that a ballot measure on a Minnesota constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage will end up as a boon to Obama.

In a PPP (D) poll released on Tuesday, 49 percent of Minnesota voters said that the state Constitution should not be amended to stipulate that only a union between a man and a woman be recognized as a valid marriage, while 43 percent said that it should be. That result was a reversal from a PPP poll taken four months ago when 48 percent were in favor of the amendment and 44 percent were opposed.

“It’s awfully hard for me to figure out how Republicans [can] do well this time in Minnesota,” said Wy Spano, a longtime Minnesota Democratic political analyst. “The energy around the constitutional amendment is so enormous.”…

Minnesota Republicans expect the presumptive nominee to campaign there at least once this summer and believe that he could make a stronger push if changing demographics reveal the Upper Midwest to be more fertile ground for him than the Mountain West swing states, which have trended Democratic in recent years.