Minnesotans are not optimistic about the direction of our state as they head to the polls this November. 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.
The Thinking Minnesota Poll regularly asks a traditional “right track/wrong direction” question and for the seventh consecutive poll, a plurality of Minnesotans think the state is moving in the wrong direction. This is the third poll in a row showing a majority believe the state is moving in the wrong direction. This represents a complete turnaround since the beginning of Tim Walz’s first term when 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 1-3, 2026, among 500 registered voters in Minnesota who voted in the November 5, 2024 election using a mix of cell phone 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. For more on why Minnesotans think the state is heading in the wrong direction, go to https://www.americanexperiment.org/wrongtrackmn/.
