Governor Tim Walz leads Republican challenger Scott Jensen by 10 percentage points with just over a month left before election day, the latest KSTP/SurveyUSA poll shows.
Walz’s lead over Jensen stands at 50 to 40 percent. Seven percent of voters were undecided.
The poll, while continuing to show Walz with a healthy margin over Jensen, indicates that lead may be shrinking. In September, KSTP/SurveyUSA released a poll that had Walz 18 percentage points ahead of Jensen.
“Nobody in Minnesota believed that Walz had an 18-point lead. Even the Walz campaign didn’t believe they had an 18-point lead but this does show there is some tightening,” WCCO Radio political analyst Blois Olson said. “You start to see that maybe there is some momentum for Republicans.”
Jensen did flip the vote among men. Walz led the demographic by 10 percentage points in the previous poll, but Jensen now leads the male vote, 46 to 44 percent. Jensen also took a lead among voters in northeastern Minnesota and widened his lead among western Minnesota voters.
Walz maintained strong favorability in several key demographics with a 56 to 33 percent lead among women and a 48 to 41 percent lead among suburban voters. Walz also led in the Twin Cities 55 to 33 percent.
The poll falls closer in line with several other polls that have been done in recent weeks. A Star Tribune/KARE 11/MPR News poll released on September 17 had Walz with a 48 to 41 percent lead over Jensen. A Trafalgar/Alpha News poll had Walz with a 48 to 45 percent lead.
The race tightening isn’t a surprise, Olson said.
“Historically Minnesota governor's races have closed quickly in the last four to six weeks. That would be normal here,” he said.
Part of the reason why, Olson said, is national trends are showing voters are starting to put more of a priority on the economy and inflation and less on abortion and crime. That favors republicans.
“Ultimately it’s going to come to who turns out. Do Democrats get their people out? Or do Republicans get their people out? If Democrats use the same machine they’ve used for the last 10 years, they still have the advantage, but they have to maintain high energy and turnout among traditional DFL voters and Republicans need to hit Trump-like numbers,” Olson said.
The poll's margin of error was 4.4 percentage points. The poll was conducted online from Sept. 30 through Oct. 30. It included 825 Minnesota adults. Of the adults, 707 were registered to vote. Of the registered voters, 604 were “likely to vote.” It included 37 percent who identified themselves as Republicans, 36 percent as Democrats and 24 percent as independents.