Back in May, I noted that:
Starting in March 2019, our Thinking Minnesota Poll has occasionally asked:
“Generally speaking, would you say that things in Minnesota are going in the right direction, or have they gotten off on the wrong track?”
The first time we asked that question, as Figure 1 shows, 57% of respondents said “Right direction” and 38% said “Wrong track.” Over the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, this flipped and in June 2021, “Wrong track” was up three points on “Right direction.” As our subsequent polling — and that of others such as St. Cloud State University and the America First Policy Institute — shows, that gap has only widened. Indeed, the last time we polled this question in February 2026, just 27% of respondents said that Minnesota is going in the “Right direction” and 65% said our state is on the “Wrong track” — that is 2 to 1 for “Wrong track.” Minnesotans would not be saying this if they truly felt that the state of their state was strong.
Figure 1: Generally speaking, would you say that things in Minnesota are going in the right direction, or have they gotten off on the wrong track?
In September, my colleague, Bill Walsh, wrote that:
Fifty-five percent of respondents to the latest Thinking Minnesota Poll said the state is moving in the wrong direction. Only 36 percent believe the state is heading in the right direction.
One of the strangest things about this election cycle is how, after sixteen years of DFL control of the executive branch — in two of which the party also controlled the state House and Senate in the “historic” trifecta — this sentiment appears to be shared by the party’s candidate to replace disgraced Governor Tim Walz: “I’m going to clean up this mess,” Senator Klobuchar says in one of her TV spots.
What “mess” would that be? Who caused it?
We at Center of the American Experiment stand ready to get to work cleaning it up.