As Gov. Tim Walz announces his intentions to seek a rare third term, he would be wise to prepare an explanation for the fraud that occurred in state agencies under his watch. That’s because 56 percent of respondents to the latest Thinking Minnesota Poll don’t think he’s done enough to prevent fraud in Minnesota.
Worse yet for Walz, a whopping 50 percent of respondents say fraud will be a major factor in their vote for governor next year. Not only are Minnesotans aware of fraud and concerned about fraud, half of our poll respondents said they are ready to hold Walz accountable at the ballot box.
The “major factor” numbers are marginally better (46 percent) for Attorney General Keith Ellison while fewer respondents are ready to blame the State House (38 percent) or the Senate (40 percent).
Diving deeper into the numbers reveals another concern for Gov. Walz. Suburban respondents stood out in the poll as particularly concerned about fraud at 70 percent. Sixty-one percent of suburbanites don’t think Gov. Walz has done enough to prevent fraud, and 51 percent say it will be a major factor in their vote for governor next year.
The Thinking Minnesota Poll also asked a traditional “right direction/wrong track” question and for the fourth consecutive poll, a plurality of Minnesotans think the state is off on the wrong track (49 percent) instead of the right direction (43 percent). At the beginning of Tim Walz’s first term in March of 2019, 57 percent of Minnesotans believed the state was moving in the right direction.
The Thinking Minnesota Poll was conducted by Meeting Street Insights, a nationally recognized polling operation based in Charleston, S.C. Interviews were completed September 2-5, 2025, among 500 registered voters in Minnesota who voted in the November 5, 2024 election using a mix of cellphone and landline interviewing. The margin of error is +-4.38 percent.
Full results of the poll will appear in the October issue of Thinking Minnesota magazine.