Will Minnesota elect a Republican senator in November?
Polls show a tight contest, with Flanagan holding a narrow edge as Tafoya makes her first run for office
Minnesota is sending a new senator to Washington this fall, and the race has all the markings of a comfortable Democratic hold. Senator Tina Smith is retiring, opening the seat for a contest between Peggy Flanagan, the state's lieutenant governor, and Michele Tafoya, a former NBC Sports sideline reporter making her first run for office. Kalshi prices Flanagan at 91% to win. Let us explain why that number is so high.
Republicans have not won a Senate race in Minnesota since 2002, and they have not taken any statewide office since 2006, according to MPR News. When Democrats win here, they usually win with a big gap. For example, Senator Amy Klobuchar's reelection two years ago came by almost 16 points.
Right now, at the time of writing this, early signals from this cycle point in the same direction. In the August primaries, almost 700,000 people voted in the Democratic Senate race and about 407,000 in the Republican one, a nearly two-to-one edge. Democrats are just more motivated to vote in this state.
The one cloud over Flanagan's campaign is a Medicaid fraud scandal that has dogged the Walz administration. A KSTP and SurveyUSA poll released September 16 showed the race tied at 42%, the first time this year that Tafoya has drawn even. The federal prosecutor handling Minnesota's cases said last December that half or more of the $18 billion billed since 2018 to 14 state-run Medicaid programs may have been fraud, and, unfortunately, Flanagan has served as Tim Walz's lieutenant governor throughout that period.
But the headwind didn’t make Flanagan fall behind in the polling average. In every poll this year, including the tie, she has been in front or level, by as much as six points. RealClearPolitics, which averages the polls, has her about two points ahead, and the Cook Political Report lists the seat as Likely Democratic. To us, as with the earlier midterm election pieces we published, the favorite currently appears to be one of the most straightforward trades in prediction markets.
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