In March 2019, for the first time, we at Center of the American Experiment polled the question “Generally speaking, would you say that things in Minnesota are going in the right direction, or have they gotten off on the wrong track?” Fifty-seven percent of respondents said “right direction” and 38% said “wrong track.” By June 2021, however, “wrong track” was up 3 points, and this has only got worse. When we last polled the question in February, just 27% of respondents said that Minnesota is going in the “right direction,” while 65% said it is on the “wrong track” — that is 2 to 1 for “wrong track.”
It is false — though, no doubt, both emotionally comforting and politically useful — to pretend that it is only the inhabitants of “MAGA World” who are concerned with the direction our state is moving (“It’s not really a myth — Minnesota is an exceptional state,” May 17, responding to other coverage critical of the state).
Those who do generally rely on rankings concocted by media companies, such as CNBC’s notorious “America’s Top States for Business,” which included “reproductive rights” in a “quality of life” measure to which it gave more weight than either the “cost of doing business” and “business friendliness” measures. Even then, when they tell you that “Minnesota ranked 10th on a recent list of best states for business by CNBC,” they won’t tell you that we ranked fifth as recently as 2023. We might still rank high, but look where we’re headed.
Such rankings provide a shelter from the data. In 2025, Minnesota became a state with a below-average level of per capita gross domestic product for the first time on record, following 10 straight years when we grew more slowly than the nation on that measure. If this sounds too esoteric consider that, between 2019 and 2024, median household income — those “middle-income ranks” some will tell you are doing so well here — fell, in Minnesota, in real terms, by 6.4%, a worse performance than in 44 states. Again, we might still rank high, but look where we’re headed.
What has gone up is taxation and government spending. The average-earning, single-filing Minnesotan — those “middle-income ranks” again — handed over a share of their wages to the state government higher than those in 43 out of 50 other states in 2025, and ours was one of just 16 states where that share has increased over the last decade. In 2025, Minnesota’s state government spent $6,098 per person, an amount higher than in 45 other states, and our real-terms, per capita increase of 18.5% between 2019 and 2025 was greater than in 42 other states. Again, we rank high, and look where we’re headed.
Minnesotans can be forgiven for asking themselves, “Am I getting more out of state government in return for my taxes than the residents in those 43 other states? Am I getting 18.5% more in return than I was seven years ago?”
Too much of this hard-earned money has been stolen as Minnesota became a byword across the country for fraud and corruption in government programs. “Politics is almost unnaturally clean,” Lance Morrow wrote in Time magazine’s famous cover story, “Minnesota: A State That Works” in 1973: “No patronage, virtually no corruption.” Nobody would say that now.
Even when the money has been spent as intended, too much of it has been dumped into failing, unreformed systems. Gov. Tim Walz boasts about “signing into law the most consequential education budgets in our state’s history,” but for the fourth consecutive year, third-grade reading proficiency on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment has declined — going from 48.2% reading at grade level in 2021 to 45.9% in 2025.
So, too many Minnesotans who ask themselves those questions are saying “no” and voting with their feet. Since 2020, Minnesota has lost residents to other parts of the U.S. at a rate greater than 34 other states. Since 2019, our state has lost residents in every age category and every income category above $25,000 annually — those “middle-income ranks” again, who some will tell you are doing so well here.
Minnesota still offers a high quality of life, but look where we’re headed. This is a great state, and we want it to remain so, but that means being clear-eyed about the problems we face. It would be a tragedy if Minnesota became another failing state riding a model of excessive taxes, spending and regulation into economic and political oblivion. Minnesotans are too realistic to allow themselves to be gaslit into thinking that all is well. The question to be asked of any candidate from any party is: “What would you do differently?”
This op ed appeared in the Star Tribune on May 24, 2026
