The two parties aren’t sending their best in this election. That includes Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Once seen as a moderate Democrat from a red-leaning district, Walz, by the time of his 2022 reelection, had burned his bridges to and his support from rural Minnesotans. A poll released this week by the Minnesota Star Tribune shows that Walz is a polarizing figure even in blue Minnesota. That may help explain why presidential polls show that the Harris-Walz ticket leads by an average of only 5.3 points in a state that Joe Biden carried by seven, even with the state’s governor now on the ticket. The Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Minnesota Poll found that Walz is viewed favorably by a razor-thin margin of 48 percent to 47 percent, six points ahead of J. D. Vance’s approval rating in Minnesota of 42 percent to 48 percent. Half of independents view Walz unfavorably. This in spite of an overall 53 percent to 44 percent approval rating for Walz’s tenure as governor. When asked how Walz and his party have governed since Democrats took full control of the state in the 2022 midterms, that approval drops to 49 percent to 47 percent. Perhaps ominously for the Democratic–Farmer–Labor trifecta, voters prefer DFL control of the Minnesota house over Republican control by just a point, 49 percent to 48 percent. While Minnesotans approve of Walz’s draconian approach to Covid by a margin of 52 percent to 46 percent, 44 percent approve of his handling of the George Floyd riots and 52 percent disapprove.
The regional breakdowns are striking. Walz’s favorability is a sky-high 62 percent to 33 percent in Hennepin and Ramsey counties (homes of Minneapolis and Saint Paul), but he is viewed unfavorably by 52 percent in the rest of the Twin Cities metro area, 54 percent in Northern Minnesota, and 55 percent in southern Minnesota — which includes his old House district. His unfavorable rating is 52 percent among those without college degrees, and there’s a huge gender gap, as Walz has a positive 57 percent to 38 percent rating among women but a mirror-image 38 percent favorability and 57 percent unfavorability among men in his own state. The gender gap on which party should hold the Minnesota house is even larger, with 59 percent of women backing the DFL and 59 percent of men backing Republicans.