Bradley Effect in the North?

Further to what I wrote here about some voters' attitudes about African American candidates, and possible implications regarding opinion polls, here is a Minnesota Public Radio report about Barack Obama's situation on Minnesota's Iron Range.

That mining region, known to insiders either as The Range, Da Range, or Da Rainch, is one of the strongest rural strongholds for the Democratic Party. The report is centered on Hibbing, the city that Robert Zimmerman left to attend college and to become Bob Dylan.

The evidence is all anecdotal and second-hand, of the "I've heard people say that" variety.

I wrote here about a historical fault line in the Democratic Party, between southern conservatives and northern liberals. But there's another fault line among northern Democrats. That one is between a more urban, white-collar faction, and more rural, blue-collar Democrats. To oversimplify horribly, (isn't that what blogs are for?) one could call them the teachers' party and the factory party.

Obama seems more at home with the former than with the latter. His degree of support among groups such as the Iron Rangers might determine whether his lead, as currently indicated by the polls, holds up, and, if so, how large his victory margin turns out to be.