Minnesota has spent most of the last two decades filed away in the Democratic column before the ballots were even printed. A new round of polling, though, has Republicans arguing that the state’s 2026 races might be closer than anyone assumed — and at least one conservative commentator is skeptical of his own side’s optimism.
Writing in American Thinker, Silvio Canto, Jr. describes his initial instinct plainly: he assumed the Democrats would win Minnesota in November. That assumption, he says, ran into a Co/efficient survey fielded September 14-15.
Those numbers put Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar at 47 percent and Republican House Speaker Lisa Demuth at 45 percent in the race to replace retiring Gov. Tim Walz. In the Senate contest, Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan led Republican Michele Tafoya, a former sports broadcaster, 43 percent to 42 percent. Both margins sit inside a range that would normally be treated as a toss-up.
Grage: ‘Minnesota Is in Play’
The poll drew attention after Dustin Grage, a Minnesota-based Republican strategist and Townhall columnist, circulated the results and argued they demonstrate the party competing at the statewide level. “Minnesota is in play for Republicans up and down the ballot,” Grage wrote, according to the American Thinker account.
Canto’s reaction to that claim is a studied maybe. He writes that he doesn’t know for sure and that a few more polls may be needed before anyone treats a single survey as a trend. Still, he offers two reasons the numbers might not be an outlier: Tim Walz has not excelled at governing, in his view, and the state outside Minneapolis is genuinely competitive territory.
The outgoing governor’s decision to skip a reelection bid looms over the whole picture. As Canto notes, Minnesota has been in the news for fraud scandals tied to Medicaid and pandemic aid, with millions of dollars meant for welfare programs involved. It got bad enough, he argues, that Walz chose to pass on running again. His line about the state of 10,000 lakes becoming the land of 10,000 and growing fraud cases is a jab, but it captures the political environment the poll is measuring.
Where the Races Actually Stand
The governor’s race presents Minnesota voters with an unusual matchup. Klobuchar is a known quantity nationally, and Canto predicts she’ll win because she always does — describing her as a “vanilla” Democrat who talks nice and votes with Sen. Chuck Schumer. That is a compliment about durability wrapped in an insult about predictability, and it explains why he treats the governor’s race as the less surprising of the two.
The Senate race is where he senses an opening. On one side is Flanagan, the lieutenant governor, whom Canto describes — via a friend in Minnesota — as weird, and whom he compares to Texas Democrat James Talarico. On the other is Tafoya, a political newcomer who, in his assessment, has the message down and presents the kind of alternative that could flip the seat.
It’s worth being clear about what this is and isn’t. A single poll fielded over two days in mid-September, circulated by a partisan strategist, is a snapshot, not a forecast. Canto himself says the race for governor may still break for Klobuchar and that more polling is needed. What the survey does establish is that the margins in both statewide contests are narrow enough that Minnesota Republicans have something to point at — and that Democratic confidence in the state may be carrying more assumptions than evidence at this stage.
Why One State Matters in a Midterm Year
Minnesota’s value in a midterm cycle is mostly psychological. A state that hasn’t elected a Republican statewide in years suddenly showing two races within two points forces money, travel, and attention into territory Democrats would rather leave uncontested. If the Co/efficient numbers are even roughly right, operatives on both sides have to decide whether to spend there — and every dollar spent defending Minnesota is a dollar not spent somewhere more marginal.
The fraud scandals give Republicans a concrete line of attack, particularly in the governor’s race, where the outgoing administration is the subject. Whether that translates into votes is a separate question from whether it generates headlines, and the poll alone can’t answer it.
Canto’s closing advice is less a prediction than a warning to pay attention. He writes that a surprise may be coming and tells readers to keep an eye on Minnesota. Given how quickly a two-point poll can become a five-point poll in the other direction, that’s about as far as the current evidence supports going.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/what-s-going-on-in-minnesota/