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Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series of stories MinnPost plans this week about the Embold Research poll.
The race for governor of Minnesota remains close, but incumbent Tim Walz has increased a narrow lead over challenger Scott Jensen in the latest MinnPost/Embold Research poll.
The DFLer was preferred by 47% of those polled while Jensen was preferred by 42%. The four other candidates on the ballot shared 5% of the support; 5% remained undecided and 1% said they would not vote.
The poll of 1,585 voters across Minnesota between Oct. 10 and Oct. 14 has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points, putting Walz’s advantage just within that window. When a similar sampling was asked in June, Walz and Jensen were virtually tied with 42% supporting Walz and 40% supporting Jensen.
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Note: The modeled margin of error is +/-2.6 percentage points.
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The DFL nominee has a large lead among women voters, leading 55% to 33%. Among men, Jensen leads 52% to 39%. Walz has a slight numerical lead in all age groups but his largest advantage is among young voters – those between age 18 and 34 – where he has 43% to 32% lead. Crosstabs can be found here.
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Note: The modeled margin of error is +/-2.6 percentage points for both polls. The June poll was conducted by Change Research; the October poll was conducted by Embold Research, the nonpartisan arm of Change Research.
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Geography is a great divider in the poll results, some of it expected. Walz has a 37-point lead in the two Twin Cities while Jensen has a 19-point lead in the seven-county metro area outside the two largest cities and leads by 14 points in Greater Minnesota. Compared to the June poll, Walz’s advantage has grown in the cities and declined in the suburbs. Because the sample size is smaller than the overall polled population, the margins of error increase in size for subregions of the state. The margin of error for this poll is plus or minus 4 percentage points in the cities, plus or minus 7 percentage points in the metro area excluding Minneapolis and St. Paul and plus or minus 4 percentage points in Greater Minnesota.
A reelection campaign begins as a referendum of sorts on the job done by the incumbent who usually does not suffer from a lack of familiarity with voters. Only 1% of surveyed voters said they had not heard of Walz, the former U.S. congressman from Mankato. That doesn’t always transfer to favorability.
Of those polled, Walz receives very favorable or somewhat favorable grades from 46%, while 48% view him unfavorably. But 40% of respondents who viewed him as unfavorable put him in the most-negative “very unfavorable” category.
“It is not unusual, especially in a state like Minnesota where you have a pretty polarized electorate,” pollster Ben Greenfield said of the depth of feelings. Walz “is very polarized in terms of people’s political orientations. I’m sure if we polled in (Gov. Tony) Evers in Wisconsin we would see pretty much the same thing.”
The good news for Jensen is that since the MinnPost/Embold Research poll in June, Jensen has become more familiar to voters – both because of his own campaign and the negative ads that have run against him by allies of Walz and the DFL. In June, 23% of voters surveyed had a favorable view of the former state senator and 19% had an unfavorable view. But at that time, 44% said they had not heard of the candidate who had recently won the endorsement of the state GOP.
Now, however, while Jensen is known by all but 9% of those who took part in the poll, his ratio of favorable-to-unfavorable responses has reversed. Now, 37% said they thought very favorably or somewhat favorably, while 44% said they were somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable toward him.
As a reference point, the voters who took part in the poll gave lower numbers to President Joe Biden (41% favorable/51% unfavorable) and former President Donald Trump (35% to 57%).
Incumbents are more likely to be affected by a sense among voters about the future. When asked whether they thought Minnesota was on the right track or going in the wrong direction, 46% said “right direction” and 54% said “wrong track,” a net negative of 8 points. In June, 59% said “wrong track.”
The same question, but asked about the nation as a whole rather than Minnesota only, showed that only 28% said “right direction” and 72% said “wrong track,” a net negative of 44 points.
Generally, pluralities feeling a state or nation is going in the wrong direction can predict a change election where incumbents don’t do well. But a two-point difference is less significant a predictor. Charlie Cook of the national Cook Political Report recently noted that more voters said “wrong direction” in each presidential election between 1980 and 2016, but the depth of their negativity made a difference. Of the five elections between 1980 and 2016 when a party lost the White House, the average net negativity number – the difference between those saying right direction and wrong track – was 46%. In the years a party maintained control, the average net negative number was 8%.
Greenfield said there is a unique environment around this question now. Biden draws unfavorable ratings among voters who still say they will vote for him or other Democrats. When Trump was president, his supporters rarely viewed him unfavorably.
The poll also asked voters to rate Walz’s job performance in office, a term that began with a strong economy and a state budget surplus but then went through a global pandemic, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the protests, riots and emotional jury trials that resulted. This is a different question than the question about whether they view some favorably or unfavorably.
“Typically the favorability number is more about someone’s personal feelings about the candidate, whereas approval is solely about the job that they are doing,” Greenfield said.
Approval numbers are generally higher than favorability numbers, he said. In Walz’s case the differences are fairly small.
Overall, 50% approve and 50% disapprove of the incumbent’s job as governor. On four individual areas, his report card is mixed. On jobs, a question meant to gauge his work on the economy, 53% of respondents approve of his work and 47% disapprove; on the pandemic, 51% approve and 49% disapprove; on crime, 42% approve and 58% disapprove and on education, 5o% approve and 50% disapprove.
The numbers all show slight improvement over the June poll results.
The number of undecided voters in the election for governor – 6% – is relatively low with three weeks to go to Election Day. But the poll suggests there is more opportunity among those voters for Jensen than for Walz. Among those voters only, 33% report they approve of the incumbent’s job performance while 67% disapprove.
MinnPost will write more extensively on how polled voters look at issues – both which issues they think are important this year and how they view them. But the poll does reveal which issues are driving support for Walz and which for Jensen.
Among voters who say they are supporting Walz, the top issue was abortion – specifically the June U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned a finding that abortion was a fundamental right that couldn’t be unduly limited by states. Following abortion was the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, climate change and then inflation.
For Jensen voters, inflation is by far the top issue, followed by immigration, crime, taxes and critical race theory.
There is some suggestion that voters who say that abortion is a top issue include both pro-abortion-rights voters and opponents of abortion. The MinnPost/Embold Research poll does not find support for that. Of those who listed abortion as one of their four top issues – and abortion was the second-most-cited issue among those polled – 76% said they voted for Biden in 2020 and 6% said they voted for Donald Trump.
Another indicator that abortion is an issue among abortion rights supports is that of those who named it as a top issue, 79% had reported they affiliated with the Democrats, 7% said they were Republicans and 33% said they were independents.
“That is consistent with what we’ve seen in other polls,” Greenfield said. “When we gave them an open-ended prompt, the vast majority – if not all – of the people who mentioned abortion are Democratic leaners who are voting for Walz.” The lack of Republican voters who cite abortion as a top issue is also consistent with other polls, he said.
“There really is not any base of Republican voters who are motivated by the victory in the Dobbs decision,” Greenfield said. “It’s really not top of mind for them. They are voting on inflation, immigration, crime, things like that.”
As the challenger, Jensen has less of a record to grade, and the MinnPost/Embold Research poll did not ask voters to assess his performance on specific areas as it did with Walz.
Methodology note
The poll was conducted from Oct. 10 to Oct. 14, and respondents included 1,585 likely general election voters. The poll was conducted by Embold Research, the nonpartisan arm of Change Research. The pollsters recruit respondents via targeted ads on websites and social media platforms. Change Research has a B- pollster rating from FiveThirtyEight.
Embold Research uses a “modeled” margin of error, which it says accounts for the effects of weighting the poll (or making adjustments to better reflect the state’s demographics). The results were weighted on age, gender, race/ethnicity, region, and 2020 presidential vote.
Associate editor Greta Kaul contributed to this report.
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It is worth noting that not very many people are polled, and that most people who are polled refuse to respond.
It’s a terrible sign that suburban voters are strongly favoring an anti-vax, election denying crackpot like Jensen. It certainly shows that Dem attempts to paint an accurate negative picture of him have failed.
It also shows that a huge number of Minnesotans have simply given up on the concept of having actual qualifications for high office. All Repub candidates apparently have to do to get endorsed for governor now is have the appropriate extremist positions, and be willing to conceal and lie about them during the campaign.
Such support for Jensen because of “inflation” also betrays a massive level of economic ignorance by these voters, brought on by Jensen’s deceptive ads that he (and his Repubs) can somehow affect something like the national inflation rate. They can’t, under any scenario, and an informed person should be able to understand that this issue is irrelevant when casting a vote for governor (or state rep for that matter).
Sorry to have to tell you this, but Doc Jensen and ex-Viking Birk (another unqualified candidate!l) can’t do a damn thing about it, folks. But they can certainly bring on four years of “conservative” misrule and political backwardness in Minnesota.
Thanks, BK. You’ve save me the trouble of having to say the same thing. Given that more than half of Republican candidates for federal office are election-deniers, and many more at national, state and local levels are anti-vax and forced-birth zealots, a vote for a Republican is a vote for authoritarian fascism – the exact opposite of the “small government” rhetoric they like to use on the campaign trail.
Exactly!
“For Jensen voters, inflation is by far the top issue, followed by immigration, crime, taxes and critical race theory.”
Other than taxes, Jensen / Birk have near zero ability to have an effect on these things. A few years back as Trump’s invading caravan of illegals neared the border I spent time in two cities: Tucson AZ and Cedar Rapids IA. I assure you that the good people of Cedar Rapids were much more concerned with the caravan than the folks less than 100 miles from the border in Tucson. Just scaring the hell out of people with things they will never impact if they win office is the only thing the GOP has left. Oh, Trump did blow up the deficit with an unneeded tax cut for the rich. I guess that is the one thing Jensen may have an ability to do.
“Other than taxes, Jensen / Birk have near zero ability to have an effect on these things.”
They can’t do much about Minnesota Constitutional protection of abortion either.
Totally wrong. Just so you know, the Governor appoints justices to the MN Supreme Court, and that court can overrule its precedents whenever a conservative majority is placed on the court. Just as what happened with Roe when the necessary number of conservative extremists were placed on the US Supreme Court.
There is no doubt whatever that a future governor Jensen would place anti-abortion extremists on the MN Supreme Court if given the opportunity. Indeed, that would almost certainly be his litmus test for any future justices during his term in office. A governor’s term is 4 years.
So attempts to claim Jensen would have no ability to destroy the current state of abortion law in MN are utterly false. Indeed, it’s a very likely way a change in MN could occur. As long as the MN Repub party remains adamantly anti-choice, existing abortion rights can be destroyed if they gain power, just as the constitutional right under Roe was illegitimately destroyed by Trump and McConnell.
I agree. I think Walz is a known commodity whereas Jensen is not. What really got me was sliding scale stance on abortion rights on a state level. It kind of reminded me former nominees for the supreme court lying about their stance on Roe vs. Wade with their “It’s to law of the land” and this isn’t something I would be looking at remarks in order to get approved for the job. Granted outstate MN. will always vote GOP because they feel state politics is metro politics. They do in fact have some valid complaints but a lot them have been blown way out of proportion by a GOP who’s only interest is fear mongering and power. People who are willing to say anything in order gain it. The sad thing is the very same people who are willing to put them in office are soon forgotten and ignored. The same way they claim the Democrats do.
We don’t know very much why people vote the way they do. What they will tell posters is mostly that the issues that concern them are whatever issues have been pushed by the parties. But media organizations buy these polls so the editorial staff is under pressure to present them as significant.
“We don’t know very much why people vote the way they do. ”
Sure we do. From studies back in the 80s:
Democrats are women, and men who think like women.
Republicans are men, and women who think like men.
It’s in the genes. Check all the poll demographic breakdowns if you disagree. It breaks down to 60-40 women who vote democrat and 60-40 men who vote republican in every election.
With a Governor that allowed a city to burn down, let COViD patients back into nursing home causing record deaths in LTC facilities, is now proposing more money for children that suffered learning loss, that he caused, by not letting them in class and has the Twin Cities in the midst of 20% increase in crime, how is it even close?? If Jensen was smart he would hammer away at simple facts that happened under Walz and believe it or not Lefties, Walz is responsible for them!
What would Dr. Jensen do to stop crime? Besides allowing more guns everywhere, that is.
An armed society is a polite society. We have over 300,000 Minnesotans who are carrying as we speak. Obviously, it’s not enough.
Including large numbers of people who are carrying “illegally” as a result of lax gun laws, poor enforcement and weak penalties.
How anyone can look at the daily gun mayhem across 21st Century America and conclude that our gun-saturated society is really a “polite society” (or needs even more guns to become one) is quite beyond me. It’s quite obvious that an armed society is simply a dangerous society, as 19th Century America sensibly concluded. As well as the entire developed world…
“An armed society is a polite society.”
Isn’t that what it used to say under the sign that said “Welcome to Uvalde?”
Could have fooled me. I haven’t traveled extensively, but the countries I have visited were generally more polite in many ways than Americans despite being largely unarmed. Yes, even in France. If Americans can’t be polite without having a weapon to support their opinion, then we’re completely uncivilized. And, by uncivilized, I don’t mean “free and self-sufficient” or some other nonsense. I mean, no more human than any other herd animal that relies on dominance and violence to maintain order.
Lock up repeat and violent offenders using cash bail to keep them in jail until trial. Not the hard!!
Does the Governor have that authority?
Details, details!
I just went downtown last night. The city has not burned down.
Election deniers? You mean like Clinton beating Trump?
Outstate MN will vote Republican bigger that they ever have in the past.
Crime and inflation will make more votes red than abortion will make them blue.
Not this again.
Clinton beat Trump in the popular vote; however, due to the Electoral College, Trump was nonetheless able to win.
She has been living rent-free in your head for a long time, hasn’t she?
RB, not sure but pretty certain the USA uses the electoral college system to pick the President. What does popular vote have to do with the presidential election besides nothing.
Yes indeed. Other than conferring actual democratic legitimacy upon the elected leader of the country, the popular vote means nothing!
The popular vote is a good gauge of the public’s support for the President. It meant that he went into office – legally and through constitutional means – without the support of most voters.
Any other country that had a system like that would be dismissed as a sham democracy.
Russia aided Trump and very possibly put him over the top. Haven’t seen the Democrat who’s given up on that one yet.
The official investigations made clear that Putin had his Russian intelligence services aid Trump’s campaign in 2016 and that various campaign officials met with Russian operatives to discuss the election; Trump was at bare minimum aware of the Russian plan to do so. So no need for any informed person to “give up” on that; quite the opposite.
No one can know the actual effect on voters of the resulting Russian election interference, nor the unprecedented and improper interfere by FBI boss Comey in making his bogus “investigation” announcement 10 days before the election. But the election was decided by around 75,000 working class white voters spread across 3 Midwest industrial states targeted by Putin. Believe it or not!
Possibly because it is verifiably true that Russia provided aid to help Trump get elected and no one has been held accountable for it. Whether that aid involved “collusion” with the Trump campaign is a different matter. Is willful blindness “collusion?” Would you collude with a loose cannon who probably thinks it’s cool to get aid from the Russians?
Well, she actually had more votes, but lost the electoral college. Trump lost both on the last election.
It’s difficult to believe anything polls say these days. I don’t think the pollsters do enough to balance out the fact that more and more people only have cell phones, that young people don’t do polls and people just aren’t always honest when answering them. It’s just not easy to account for that. Look at the exit polls in the 2016 Presidential Election. The polltakers were lied to by the voters that had just come out of the voting booth. The pollsters themselves are touting a margin of error that is tighter and tighter yet the results are less and less accurate.
Who are these voters? 9% don’t know who Jensen is and 1% don’t know the sitting Governor? Maybe there should be some kind of civics test before we allow people to vote. Shees!
The 1% that don’t know who their Governor is and the 9% that don’t know the opposition aren’t “likely voters”. Everyone exists somewhere along the bell curve, and I totally agree that those on the bottom end could use some remediation in basic Civics so that they don’t vote against their own interests.
There have been large numbers of badly informed and ignorant American citizens casting votes for representatives since 1792. The ignorant ye will always have with ye…
You do know that studies have consistently shown that voters who get most of their “news” from Rightwing Noise Machine outlets (like Fox) are more factually ignorant and incorrect than voters who get their news from other sources? Sad but true!
“Embold Research uses a “modeled” margin of error, which it says accounts for the effects of weighting the poll (or making adjustments to better reflect the state’s demographics).”
Obviously, the problem is what is being reported is the model, not the numbers. They are telling us what they think the state should be, not what it is. The thumb on the scales is very scientifically calibrated.
We know the polls are wrong. That’s why we talk about “margin of error”. In what other area of journalism is it okay to publish information that we know to be in error?
Any sample includes a margin of error. It’s a well-known principle of statistics, based on the idea that one cannot assume a sample of less than the whole is always going to be accurate. There is a mathematical way for determining accuracy and what the error should be (the Student T Test) that I do not pretend to understand fully.
Any sample includes a margin of error. It’s a well-known principle of statistics, based on the idea that one cannot assume a sample of less than the whole is always going to be accurate.
If the results are in error, why are they being reported? And how exactly do we know what the error is? Since we don’t know what the correct numbers at the time of the poll are, how do we know how far they are off?
“If the results are in error, why are they being reported?”
The results are not “in error.” There is an assumption built in to any sample – whether it’s opinion polling, sampling the quality of grain, or telling how many black or white beans are in a jar – that it is not necessarily 100% accurate.
Why don’t you read up on the Student T Test?
It’s very fair to hold Walz responsible for the insane policies his party implemented which have led to soaring energy prices and crime.
I’m legitimately curious: what are those “insane policies” that were implemented by the Democrats (without having both houses) that “have led to soaring energy prices and crime?”
Energy prices are a global issue caused by increased demand after the Covid recession and Putin’s War against Ukraine; Dem policies have nothing do with this increase, least of all MN DFL “policies”. So this point is total nonsense, no matter how many times Repub candidates repeat it. And it’s especially ridiculous to try to tar Walz[!] with increased energy prices.
And what Dem “policy” is responsible for increased violent gun crime in MN? I’d say longstanding “conservative” policies advocating for the great social “benefit” of private firearms and making high-powered weapons more available to all are far more likely to be a cause of increased violent gun crimes, both in MN and across the country.
What effect does the State of Minnesota have on energy prices?
Crime is up nationwide. Why would Minnesota be any different?
I don’t think Walz’s policies were exceptionally insane although in hindsight they could have been improved upon. It’s ridiculous to hold Walz responsible for inflation, for example, which a global economic phenomena not limited to Minnesota. The fact is, the inflation we are seeing now is the price we are paying for economic stimulus policies promulgated by a Republican administration which both parties embraced.
Or did you not cash your stimulus checks?
No small amount of the inflation we’re seeing is actually profit margins from some corporations. Corporations are largely protected from being held responsible for price gouging. Of course corporations need to profit. They’ll use cost management and pricing to do that, so not all price increases are gouging (and increased profit margins are not necessarily a sign of gouging). But we really do need some good investigative journalism on this. We’ve finally gotten to the point where economists are admitting that this is a significant factor, but no one is doing the work to make consumers aware of the perpetrators.
Minnesota – strong economy generating tax surplus, very low unemployment and wage increases as well as high incomes for executives of local companies. These are all local issues. Inflation – an international issue. Governors have little impact.
How are Republican stronger in the economy? Letting companies pollute, failing to protect consumers from fraud, lowering worker safety standards. What is grit plan? Unknown.
Crime? The leader of the Republican is a conman who has escaped consequences because of his wealth. Do we want to punish the crimes of poor and minority propld harshly, but let off rich white guys who steal not because they need the money, but can get away with it.
The largest crime in the last two years was the attempt of Trump to invalidate an election he lost in order to become dictator, injuring 140 police officers. Taking what isn’t yours is the very definition of crime.
Trump’s inept leadership resulted in more than a million COVID deaths, 16% of global deaths with under 5% of global population despite having great Covid care and the best access to vaccines in the world. An anti vaccination doctor abetted those deaths.
Minnesota has among the lowest death rates in the country because of Walz. Thousands more would be dead under Jensen’s policies, making our experience like Iowa and the Dakotas.
This is Minnesota’s chance to repudiate the dishonesty and corruption of Trumpism and his local agents.
Jobs jobs jobs. We need more mining up North, just like back in the day. I toured the Sudan Mine a few years ago. It was the Cadillac of iron mines. No sloshing around in ankle deep water while you worked thousands of feet underground. The detail that really got to me was that the miners were required to buy their own candles to have enough light to work. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Republicans aren’t good for the economy. Republican presidential administrations always end in financial collapse. What Republicans are good for are various elements of the economy, often managers, and on rare occasions, owners. Since Republican ideas for economic management began to prevail in our society with the election of Ronald Reagan, working people have struggled, and they have lagged behind. What Republicans are good at is not economics, but rather blaming others for their failures.