Yes. He is. Somehow nobody saw this coming, inside or outside of Minnesota, despite the endless drumbeat of daily media coverage pounded into peoples' brains. Or they convinced themselves it wasn't gonna be a problem.
I'll be eagerly awaiting polls from the campaigns contradicting all these lackluster media polls...but I'm not at all sure that they're coming.
No offense, but what world do you live in to think Minnesota of all places will vote Republican after all of the progress made in other, much redder states?
I find it very hard to believe it will suddenly start voting Republican after decades of being stubbornly Democratic (with a few exceptions, of course), amidst a national blue wave that sees the likes of Trump +15 seats flipping.
I'll just leave it at that and we'll await further clarification on if and when my insider perspective of warning signs for Minnesota Democrats stops being backed up by data and when the outsider perspective of cocksure confidence about Minnesota Democrats starts getting backed up by data.
I just really have a hard time believing that Walz's scandal is going to matter more to voters than the ICE invasion of Minnesota or the tariffs' impact on farm country that is helping us be competitive in much redder states in the same part of the country like Iowa and Nebraska, especially when we're in a D+8 environment nationwide.
Ultimately I think Democrats are overestimating the salience of Operation Metro Surge outside of the Democratic base. This has been an ongoing pattern of misjudged issue salience going back more than a decade.
Democrats counted on a consolidation of support because of the Sandy Hook killings.
Voters didn't care.
Democrats counted on a furious public censuring Donald Trump over inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Voters didn't care.
Democrats counted on the overturning of the constitutional right to a legal abortion motivating a critical mass of voters to rebuke the ruling.
Voters didn't care.
And now Democrats are counting on the Orwellian nightmare Trump imposed on Minneapolis, resulting into two civilian murders, being a motivating factor that propels base turnout and/or flips independents enough to move the needle. Will they be right this time?
I'm skeptical.
Voters are selfish. They vote their perception of self-interest and community interest. As it relates to the profile of voter most likely to decide Minnesota elections this fall, I suspect the Trump-skeptical hockey dad from upscale suburbia sees more self-interest and community interest in "getting the thieving fraudsters ripping us off under control" than he does in avenging Renee Good or Alex Pretti's killings.
I think this a truly massive misreading of the American political system that seems to be rooted in your own pessimism. How did voters not care about Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade? Pretty much every analysis of the 2022 elections indicates that Dobbs was a key factor in why a Red Wave election didn't develop that year and why Democrats overperformed.
And where did anyone say that Democrats counted on a consolidation of support because of Sandy Hook? We definitely expected to actually get gun control passed after that, but I don't think people were expecting that we'd win the midterms in 2014 because of it.
As for January 6th, sure, that didn't disqualify Trump, but if Trump had been running for something less than a year after it happened it probably would have had far more of an impact on the race than 4 years later. Alex Pretti was killed less than 8 months ago, this is something that happened extremely recently.
And as for the voters being selfish - do we really think the Trump-skeptical hockey dad from upscale suburbia cares more about fraud or the tariffs, inflation, and high gas prices and interest rates? Even if we're only judging based on self-interest, I really do not think that this one scandal is more important to swing voters in a Senate election than their own personal finances are. Harris won Minnesota by 4 points, and the political environment is 9 points to the left of where it was in 2024 nationwide. The idea that 13% of the electorate is going to swing right relative to that in order to make Minnesota a tossup state just because of a scandal from an outgoing administration doesn't seem realistic to me.
My own take of Minnesota, I don't think it will go red for Gov or Senate. But it's likely we won't see the same blue wave as in other parts of the country. What I see goes back to some of MN's character of high voter turnout. This has helped the DFL in the state many years when Dem turnout was depressed nationwide. Here's the flipside; the Rep voters in the state are less likely to skip this midterm. They will show up.
All that said, they don't have the numbers to actually win either Gov or Senate. Maybe AG (the reps here hate Ellison, gee I wonder why), or maybe another statewide race. I want more polling of the state to see good numbers for Flanagan, but it's very unlikely she loses. Not impossible, though.
Yeah, I'm not expecting double digit wins for Flanagan or Ellison or anything, but I just don't see a path to victory for Republicans in this national environment. And sure, AG is a statewide race, but Ellison is also a former national figure that has contributed to national matters during his tenure.
Ellison’s big legacy as AG is him being the one who prosecuted Derek Chauvin, the infamous killer of George Floyd. I can imagine the feelings of the MN population on that are heavily party-based.
Yeah I think Ellison is in trouble and I'd be surprised if Scott Jensen doesn't take the Auditor's race given the way all the ducks are lining up for that (third party spoiler, name familiarity gap, voters believing they'd be electing a steward of state finances in this position).
I suspect Flanagan hangs on by her fingernails but only with my long-predicted DSCC intervention. At this point, if I was Tafoya, I would avoid all media interviews and debates. She has nowhere to go but down when she opens her mouth and reveals how little she knows about anything related to governance.
I might have asked you this before, Mark, but I was wondering if you were familiar with Daniel Elazar's political cultures model - this is the one that separates states by political culture of Moralist(Minnesota, some of the midwest, and some of New England), Traditionalist (the South), and Individualist (just about every other state). This model has been on my mind a lot in the past few years.
I don't expect us to win Georgia's 11th, but if it's even a single digit race that would be crazy, I don't think we've come within 20 points in any race at any level there in a couple decades.
Nebraska's 1st is the kind of thing that definitely could be competitive in a wave. Trump only won it by 12 in 2024 and 11 in 2020.
It's strange to me that the CA wealth tax is a large one-time levy rather than smaller annual levy. Is anybody familiar with the reasoning behind this?
1. Could be an easier sell to voters. Most people have an aversion to taxes in general and work under the delusion that one day they may have to pay it.
2. Could be an effort to get the wealthy now before they flee the state
Well, when Jerry Brown was Governor just before Gavin Newsom took over, he was able to create a budget surplus by increasing taxes on the wealthy. This came while at the same time the tech boom happened, even while that was primarily in the Bay Area.
I still think it’s silly we have to resort to any kind of tax increase in a proposition form when it can otherwise be easily accomplished with the super majority Democrats have in the state legislature. Couldn’t those behind Prop 40 have chosen to lobby Democrats in government instead?
Former Sen. Jon Kyl has died, his family announced today. He was diagnosed with dementia in December 2025. His last act in public life was shepherding Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to SCOTUS through the Senate.
Kyl, more conservative than his longtime colleague John McCain, was Senate Minority Whip in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
He was appointed to succeed McCain after his death in 2018, but almost immediately resigned, leaving Martha McSally to serve another partial term, ultimately losing to Democrat Mark Kelly in a 2020 special.
Weird phenomenon I’ve noticed this week — as the Dems’ lead in the generic ballot has exploded to ~9 points in a bunch of the trackers, Trump’s approval has too.. he’s at 39-40% in the averages, up a few points from last month. Still awful, and doesn’t seem to be having an effect on individual races.
I don't want to get too overconfident, and there's still a month and a half left to go till the election, but it's worth pointing out that when looking at the most recent 10 polls from all of the competitive Senate races (at least out of any that are in Nate Silver's election model - https://www.natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2026-midterm-election-polls-model), we've led in all 10 from North Carolina and Maine, 9 out of 10 from Alaska, Texas, and Ohio, and 8 out of 10 from Michigan.
Bob Casey also led almost all the polls? In the end his ads started to say he would work with Trump, you knew his internal said something starkly different.
I agree, we can't get too overconfident (especially in Maine, where Collins overperforming the polls and winning wouldn't surprise anyone). But I'd rather be leading all of the polls than not.
There was one done around the same time in 2024 where he lead Ehasz by 14 points. So glad to see him not reach double digits but I hate stuff like this.
What's with the terrible round of Minnesota polls? Is Walz that much of a drag on other statewide Dems?
The SUSA poll? SUSA had Craig up on Flanagan by 2 right before Flanagan won by over 20.
https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/kstp-surveyusa-poll-demuth-in-striking-distance-of-lindell-craig-up-in-key-demographic/
Yes. He is. Somehow nobody saw this coming, inside or outside of Minnesota, despite the endless drumbeat of daily media coverage pounded into peoples' brains. Or they convinced themselves it wasn't gonna be a problem.
I'll be eagerly awaiting polls from the campaigns contradicting all these lackluster media polls...but I'm not at all sure that they're coming.
No offense, but what world do you live in to think Minnesota of all places will vote Republican after all of the progress made in other, much redder states?
I think Mark lives in Minnesota, as a matter of fact. And he knows more about it than most of us.
I find it very hard to believe it will suddenly start voting Republican after decades of being stubbornly Democratic (with a few exceptions, of course), amidst a national blue wave that sees the likes of Trump +15 seats flipping.
The world I live in is Minnesota.
I'll just leave it at that and we'll await further clarification on if and when my insider perspective of warning signs for Minnesota Democrats stops being backed up by data and when the outsider perspective of cocksure confidence about Minnesota Democrats starts getting backed up by data.
Okay. I guess I just need to hear more data than one bad set of polls by a firm that literally just fumbled a primary like Paleo said.
I just really have a hard time believing that Walz's scandal is going to matter more to voters than the ICE invasion of Minnesota or the tariffs' impact on farm country that is helping us be competitive in much redder states in the same part of the country like Iowa and Nebraska, especially when we're in a D+8 environment nationwide.
Ultimately I think Democrats are overestimating the salience of Operation Metro Surge outside of the Democratic base. This has been an ongoing pattern of misjudged issue salience going back more than a decade.
Democrats counted on a consolidation of support because of the Sandy Hook killings.
Voters didn't care.
Democrats counted on a furious public censuring Donald Trump over inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Voters didn't care.
Democrats counted on the overturning of the constitutional right to a legal abortion motivating a critical mass of voters to rebuke the ruling.
Voters didn't care.
And now Democrats are counting on the Orwellian nightmare Trump imposed on Minneapolis, resulting into two civilian murders, being a motivating factor that propels base turnout and/or flips independents enough to move the needle. Will they be right this time?
I'm skeptical.
Voters are selfish. They vote their perception of self-interest and community interest. As it relates to the profile of voter most likely to decide Minnesota elections this fall, I suspect the Trump-skeptical hockey dad from upscale suburbia sees more self-interest and community interest in "getting the thieving fraudsters ripping us off under control" than he does in avenging Renee Good or Alex Pretti's killings.
I think this a truly massive misreading of the American political system that seems to be rooted in your own pessimism. How did voters not care about Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade? Pretty much every analysis of the 2022 elections indicates that Dobbs was a key factor in why a Red Wave election didn't develop that year and why Democrats overperformed.
And where did anyone say that Democrats counted on a consolidation of support because of Sandy Hook? We definitely expected to actually get gun control passed after that, but I don't think people were expecting that we'd win the midterms in 2014 because of it.
As for January 6th, sure, that didn't disqualify Trump, but if Trump had been running for something less than a year after it happened it probably would have had far more of an impact on the race than 4 years later. Alex Pretti was killed less than 8 months ago, this is something that happened extremely recently.
And as for the voters being selfish - do we really think the Trump-skeptical hockey dad from upscale suburbia cares more about fraud or the tariffs, inflation, and high gas prices and interest rates? Even if we're only judging based on self-interest, I really do not think that this one scandal is more important to swing voters in a Senate election than their own personal finances are. Harris won Minnesota by 4 points, and the political environment is 9 points to the left of where it was in 2024 nationwide. The idea that 13% of the electorate is going to swing right relative to that in order to make Minnesota a tossup state just because of a scandal from an outgoing administration doesn't seem realistic to me.
My own take of Minnesota, I don't think it will go red for Gov or Senate. But it's likely we won't see the same blue wave as in other parts of the country. What I see goes back to some of MN's character of high voter turnout. This has helped the DFL in the state many years when Dem turnout was depressed nationwide. Here's the flipside; the Rep voters in the state are less likely to skip this midterm. They will show up.
All that said, they don't have the numbers to actually win either Gov or Senate. Maybe AG (the reps here hate Ellison, gee I wonder why), or maybe another statewide race. I want more polling of the state to see good numbers for Flanagan, but it's very unlikely she loses. Not impossible, though.
Yeah, I'm not expecting double digit wins for Flanagan or Ellison or anything, but I just don't see a path to victory for Republicans in this national environment. And sure, AG is a statewide race, but Ellison is also a former national figure that has contributed to national matters during his tenure.
Ellison’s big legacy as AG is him being the one who prosecuted Derek Chauvin, the infamous killer of George Floyd. I can imagine the feelings of the MN population on that are heavily party-based.
Yeah I think Ellison is in trouble and I'd be surprised if Scott Jensen doesn't take the Auditor's race given the way all the ducks are lining up for that (third party spoiler, name familiarity gap, voters believing they'd be electing a steward of state finances in this position).
I suspect Flanagan hangs on by her fingernails but only with my long-predicted DSCC intervention. At this point, if I was Tafoya, I would avoid all media interviews and debates. She has nowhere to go but down when she opens her mouth and reveals how little she knows about anything related to governance.
I might have asked you this before, Mark, but I was wondering if you were familiar with Daniel Elazar's political cultures model - this is the one that separates states by political culture of Moralist(Minnesota, some of the midwest, and some of New England), Traditionalist (the South), and Individualist (just about every other state). This model has been on my mind a lot in the past few years.
No I'm not familiar, but you have me intrigued from the teaser.
I really wish someone would release an internal from Minnesota just so we can see how reality is really gauging against some of these recent polls.
Anyone here from MINN want to check in from the ground on this ?
Ask Mark
Bunch of polls out this morning on Michigan and Texas from Emerson, Siena and WPost.
El Sayed up 2 and 3.
Talarico up 1 and 6
Benson up 7 and 12
Abbott up 3 in one poll, Hinijosa up 4 in the other.
Hinijosa up? 👀
The Siena poll that put her up was also conducted in Spanish. Stay tuned.
Spanish and English or just Spanish?
Both.
Minnesota this, Minnesota that. I don't think it's a problem. But I'm cool with GA-11 and NE-1 being competitive.
I don't expect us to win Georgia's 11th, but if it's even a single digit race that would be crazy, I don't think we've come within 20 points in any race at any level there in a couple decades.
Nebraska's 1st is the kind of thing that definitely could be competitive in a wave. Trump only won it by 12 in 2024 and 11 in 2020.
Then-Rep. Bob Barr was held to 54-46 in 2000, but the district looks a lot different now.
It is not the district looked different, it is the people. 😂
It's strange to me that the CA wealth tax is a large one-time levy rather than smaller annual levy. Is anybody familiar with the reasoning behind this?
1. Could be an easier sell to voters. Most people have an aversion to taxes in general and work under the delusion that one day they may have to pay it.
2. Could be an effort to get the wealthy now before they flee the state
Well, when Jerry Brown was Governor just before Gavin Newsom took over, he was able to create a budget surplus by increasing taxes on the wealthy. This came while at the same time the tech boom happened, even while that was primarily in the Bay Area.
I still think it’s silly we have to resort to any kind of tax increase in a proposition form when it can otherwise be easily accomplished with the super majority Democrats have in the state legislature. Couldn’t those behind Prop 40 have chosen to lobby Democrats in government instead?
I think it's trying to minimize relocating. Though apparently some billionaires already did so in anticipation of it being proposed.
Former Sen. Jon Kyl has died, his family announced today. He was diagnosed with dementia in December 2025. His last act in public life was shepherding Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to SCOTUS through the Senate.
https://ktar.com/arizona-politics-news/jon-kyl-dies-84-congressman
Kyl, more conservative than his longtime colleague John McCain, was Senate Minority Whip in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
He was appointed to succeed McCain after his death in 2018, but almost immediately resigned, leaving Martha McSally to serve another partial term, ultimately losing to Democrat Mark Kelly in a 2020 special.
If we had done a little better in 2008 and beaten McConnell in Kentucky, I wonder if he would have become the Republican leader in the Senate.
If that were to happen, he might have ran again in 2012 and maybe even 2018, forgoing Flake and Sinema.
Weird phenomenon I’ve noticed this week — as the Dems’ lead in the generic ballot has exploded to ~9 points in a bunch of the trackers, Trump’s approval has too.. he’s at 39-40% in the averages, up a few points from last month. Still awful, and doesn’t seem to be having an effect on individual races.
That's not what I'm seeing in Nate Silver's tracker - Trump's approval rating is only 0.2 points higher than his average had it at its lowest point.
It has on NYT (was 60-37 a little while ago, now 59-38) and RCP
60-37 and 59-38 are statistically the exact same.
Alaska:
Petola up 7
Kreiss-Tomkins up 10
https://www.aarp.org/pri/topics/voter-research/politics/2026-midterm-election-poll-alaska/
Fascinating
Alaska polling isn't always the most reliable thing in the world, but it's hard not to be excited about these numbers.
Unfortunately the same poll has Begich up 14, but I'll definitely take 2/3.
And Governor is arguably more important than the House seat, if Democrats are getting a majority in that chamber.
I don't want to get too overconfident, and there's still a month and a half left to go till the election, but it's worth pointing out that when looking at the most recent 10 polls from all of the competitive Senate races (at least out of any that are in Nate Silver's election model - https://www.natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2026-midterm-election-polls-model), we've led in all 10 from North Carolina and Maine, 9 out of 10 from Alaska, Texas, and Ohio, and 8 out of 10 from Michigan.
Bob Casey also led almost all the polls? In the end his ads started to say he would work with Trump, you knew his internal said something starkly different.
Let’s see if there is desperation setting in.
I agree, we can't get too overconfident (especially in Maine, where Collins overperforming the polls and winning wouldn't surprise anyone). But I'd rather be leading all of the polls than not.
FL 27: Salazar criticizes Trump on immigration in TV ad.
https://bsky.app/profile/robertscotthorton.bsky.social/post/3mvpriz2fms2w
New Poll released in PA-01
Public Opinion Strategies (Sponsored by Fitz)
Fitzpatrick: 51%
Harvie: 42%
https://x.com/lisakashinsky/status/2100574733318193390
There was one done around the same time in 2024 where he lead Ehasz by 14 points. So glad to see him not reach double digits but I hate stuff like this.