Preview only: Minnesota's own model is not built yet. The county groups, map, what-if scenarios and past-race numbers on this page are Texas's, used as stand-ins. The polls and results are Minnesota's.
The forecast
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Numbers as a table
Things to know
The race in two minutes
Read by Maren Holt, Pollitrack's anchor · Recorded October 25
Read the transcript
I'm Maren Holt, and this is your Pollitrack digest on the Senate race in Minnesota.
The seat is open. Tina Smith is not running, so on November 3 Minnesota picks a new senator. Minnesota rotates the order of names on its ballot, so we list them alphabetically: Peggy Flanagan of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the lieutenant governor, and Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NBC Sports sideline reporter.
The polling average has Flanagan ahead by 4 points across seven recent polls. Minnesota polls have missed in both directions about equally, so Pollitrack's forecast takes nothing off. That leaves Flanagan ahead by 4, with a 79 percent chance of finishing first and Tafoya at 21 percent.
That is a real lead, but well within the range a polling miss could close.
Absentee and early voting has been open since September and runs through November second. The state had accepted more than four hundred thousand ballots by October twenty-third, but Pollitrack does not yet track Minnesota's early vote day by day, so the forecast rests on the polls.
On election night, Pollitrack reads five bellwether counties, each standing in for a part of the state: Dakota for Minneapolis-St. Paul, the suburbs and Rochester; Houston for Mankato, Winona and the river towns; Itasca for Duluth and the Iron Range; Meeker for St. Cloud and the outer suburbs; and Mille Lacs for farm country.
Polls close at 8 pm Central. Minnesota reports absentee and Election Day ballots together, precinct by precinct, so there is no early-vote batch first. Scroll down to explore each county, or switch to What-if mode and play out your own night. I'm Maren Holt. See you on election night.
The recording plays on the Pollitrack site. The transcript is above.
Early voting
How to read this: the line adds up early votes day by day, in person and by mail. The amber line is 2026; the gray lines are past years on the same day of early voting, so a 2026 line above them means more early votes than then. Refreshed every morning and afternoon from the Minnesota Secretary of State's early-vote counts.Numbers as a table
Numbers as a table
Cumulative early votes, in person and by mail, against the same day in 2022 and 2024.
In the news
How to read this: the headlines free news sources carry about this race, newest first, with who published each. The counts are how many stories named each candidate in the last seven days. Pollitrack reads the headlines; it does not judge them and they do not change the forecast.
The newest headlines about this race, refreshed twice a day.
This week: 37 stories name Flanagan, 8 name Tafoya, 17 name both.
- Bernie Sanders joins Peggy Flanagan at Duluth rally
- Sen. Bernie Sanders promotes Peggy Flanagan, Keith Ellison at Duluth rally
- Bernie Sanders holds rally promoting Peggy Flanagan and Keith Ellison
- Bernie Sanders returns to Minnesota to stump for Flanagan and Ellison
- Peggy Flanagan gets emotional talking about the late Paul Wellstone
- standing ovation for Peggy Flanagan when she endorses "ripping ICE apart"
Five county groups
How to read this: every county joins the group whose bellwether county it has moved most like since 2016. The color is the group's margin in the view you pick: where its bellwether lands if the polls are right, its 2024 President result, or, on election night, how far each county has shifted since 2024. Darker means a bigger lead: 15 points or more, 5 to 15, or under 5. Tap a group or a county to light up its group.
Every county joins the bellwether it has voted most like since 2016.
Pick a group to light up its counties.
500 possible election nights
How to read this: the forecast is replayed 500 times, each with a different random draw of its uncertainty. Each dot is five possible nights, stacked by the statewide margin in 1-point steps: blue dots are Flanagan wins and red dots are Tafoya wins. The more dots on one side of the tie line, the likelier that candidate wins.
The forecast replayed 500 times, with every county group free to miss.
Wins per 100 nights · each dot = 5 nights
The five bellwethers
How to read this: each row is one county, on a scale from a big Tafoya lead (left) to a big Flanagan lead (right). The amber mark is the tie line: if every part of Minnesota shifted as much as this county did, a result there would mean a statewide tie. A dot to the right of it is good news for Flanagan, and to the left for Tafoya; the colored bar shows how far each county is from the tie line, and toward whom. The gray ticks are the 2024 and 2018 results. The dot is where the polling average points until results post, then the real result. Drag a dot, tap anywhere on a row, or use the arrow keys to try your own numbers; the dot clicks onto the marks when you get close.
Drag a dot, or pick a scenario, to see who wins Minnesota.
Fine-tune the assumptions
County guides
Why each county was picked and what to watch.
Biggest vote source
DakotaTie line: Flanagan +8.6 · stands in for Minneapolis-St. Paul, the suburbs and Rochester, 58% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Harris +12.8
- 2022 Governor
- Walz +14.3
- 2018 Governor
- Walz +11.7
- Compared with Minnesota
- From even in 2018 to 8.6 points more Democratic in 2024
Why this county
Dakota County, the southern suburbs of the Twin Cities (Eagan, Burnsville, Apple Valley, Lakeville), leads the biggest group: the seven core metro counties plus Olmsted (Rochester) and Cook (the North Shore), 58.1% of the 2024 vote, which Harris won by 24.5. Every point of swing here is worth almost six tenths of a point statewide. Dakota has tracked the group's swing most closely in the six races the model was tested on; Washington (0.6 points off on average) and Scott (0.7) come close, and Hennepin and Ramsey are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Flanagan +8.6: a result above it favors Flanagan, below it Tafoya. Harris won Dakota by 12.8 while carrying the state by 4.2; Walz and Flanagan won it by 14.3 in 2022. Dakota has moved toward the Democrats faster than the state: it voted with Minnesota as a whole in 2018 and 8.6 points to its left in 2024. Hennepin's tie line is Flanagan +38.2, Ramsey's Flanagan +38.9 and Washington's Flanagan +4.6.
When results come in
The page reads Dakota's count from the Secretary of State's files as its precincts report; to watch Hennepin instead, pick it as the group's county. Read an early number with care: absentee and Election Day ballots are reported together, precinct by precinct, so a county's early margin is only its first precincts.
Signals so far
Minnesota doesn't register voters by party. Statewide, 419,189 absentee and early ballots had been accepted by October 23. For scale: in the 2022 governor's race Dakota cast 200,613 votes and Hennepin 575,529.
Small-city test
HoustonTie line: Tafoya +20.7 · stands in for Mankato, Winona, Bemidji and the river towns, 6% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Trump +16.5
- 2022 Governor
- Jensen +14.5
- 2018 Governor
- Walz +1.6
- Compared with Minnesota
- 10–22 points more Republican in every race since 2016
Why this county
Houston County, in the far southeast corner on the Mississippi (Caledonia, La Crescent), casts only 0.4% of Minnesota's vote. It leads 13 counties that cast 6.3%: college and river towns like Mankato (Blue Earth), Winona, Red Wing (Goodhue), St. Peter (Nicollet), Bemidji (Beltrami) and Marshall (Lyon). Trump won the group by 13.3 in 2024. With Houston, the five bellwethers fit past statewide results best; Winona (0.2 points off on average) and Lyon (0.4) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Tafoya +20.7: a wider Tafoya margin favors Tafoya, a narrower one Flanagan. Walz and Flanagan carried Houston by 1.6 in 2018, when they won the state by 11.4; Jensen won it by 14.5 in 2022 and Trump by 16.5 in 2024. Winona's tie line is Tafoya +9.1 and Blue Earth's Tafoya +5.5.
When results come in
Houston is small (8,745 votes in the 2022 governor's race), so it can finish early. The page reads its count as precincts report and leans on it more as more of them are in.
Signals so far
The Secretary of State publishes each county's accepted absentee ballots; this page doesn't read them yet. For scale: Winona cast 20,450 votes and Blue Earth 26,509 in the 2022 governor's race.
Iron Range test
ItascaTie line: Tafoya +24.3 · stands in for Duluth, the Iron Range, Moorhead and Austin, 9% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Trump +20.1
- 2022 Governor
- Jensen +11.6
- 2018 Governor
- Johnson +1.6
- Compared with Minnesota
- 11–24 points more Republican in every race since 2016, most in 2024
Why this county
Itasca County (Grand Rapids, on the western Iron Range) leads nine counties that cast 8.8% of the 2024 vote and split almost exactly even: St. Louis (Duluth and the central Range), Carlton, Koochiching, Clay (Moorhead), Mower (Austin), Rice (Northfield and Faribault), Wabasha and Fillmore. Most of the group has moved right, against the state, since 2018. Itasca has tracked the group's swing most closely; Carlton (0.2 points off on average) and St. Louis (0.3) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Tafoya +24.3: a wider Tafoya margin favors Tafoya, a narrower one Flanagan. Itasca was nearly even in 2018 (Johnson +1.6, Housley +0.3) and went for Trump by 20.1 in 2024. St. Louis's tie line is Flanagan +9.4; Harris won it by 13.7 and Walz and Flanagan by 25.3 in 2018.
When results come in
The page reads Itasca's count as precincts report; to watch St. Louis instead, pick it as the group's county. St. Louis is the group's big county: 92,840 votes in the 2022 governor's race, to Itasca's 21,373.
Signals so far
No county count on this page yet. Statewide, 177,841 mail ballots and 241,348 in-person ballots had been accepted by October 23.
Exurb test
MeekerTie line: Tafoya +46.9 · stands in for St. Cloud, the outer suburbs and lakes country, 20% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Trump +42.7
- 2022 Governor
- Jensen +37.3
- 2018 Governor
- Johnson +26.6
- Compared with Minnesota
- 36–48 points more Republican in every race since 2016
Why this county
Meeker County (Litchfield, west of the metro) leads 27 counties that cast 20.2% of the 2024 vote, which Trump won by 33.4: the fast-growing outer suburbs of Wright, Sherburne, Chisago and Isanti, St. Cloud (Stearns and Benton), and the lakes country around Brainerd, Alexandria and Fergus Falls. Every point of swing here is worth about two tenths of a point statewide. With Meeker, the five bellwethers fit past statewide results best; Isanti (0.2 points off on average) and Kandiyohi (0.3) come close, and Stearns and Wright are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Tafoya +46.9: a wider Tafoya margin favors Tafoya, a narrower one Flanagan. Johnson won Meeker by 26.6 in 2018 and Trump by 42.7 in 2024. Klobuchar held White to 26.0 here in 2024, a sign of how far ticket-splitting can reach in this group. Stearns's tie line is Tafoya +30.9 and Wright's Tafoya +33.5.
When results come in
The page reads its count as precincts report. Meeker is small (10,814 votes in the 2022 governor's race); Wright (66,223) and Stearns (65,485) are the group's big counties.
Signals so far
Minnesota doesn't register voters by party, so absentee counts here would say how many vote, not whom they favor.
Rural test
Mille LacsTie line: Tafoya +45.0 · stands in for farm country and small towns, 7% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Trump +40.8
- 2022 Governor
- Jensen +34.5
- 2018 Governor
- Johnson +22.1
- Compared with Minnesota
- 32–45 points more Republican in every race since 2016
Why this county
Mille Lacs County (Princeton and Milaca, south of Lake Mille Lacs) leads the most counties: 29 that cast 6.5% of the 2024 vote, which Trump won by 36.7. They are farm and small-town counties across southern and western Minnesota and the Red River valley, from Le Sueur, Freeborn (Albert Lea) and Nobles (Worthington) to Pine, Todd and Kittson. With Mille Lacs, the five bellwethers fit past statewide results best; Pope (0.2 points off on average), Pine and Todd (0.3) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Tafoya +45.0: a wider Tafoya margin favors Tafoya, a narrower one Flanagan. Johnson won it by 22.1 in 2018 and Trump by 40.8 in 2024. Freeborn's tie line is Tafoya +25.5; Walz and Flanagan carried it by 1.4 in 2018.
When results come in
Small counties like this one (11,078 votes in the 2022 governor's race) often finish early. The page reads its count as precincts report and leans on it more as more of them are in.
Signals so far
No county count on this page yet; the Secretary of State's absentee page has one for each county.
Timeline
When results usually arrive, Central time.
Absentee and early voting. Minnesotans have been able to vote by mail or in person since September 18; from October 16 in-person voters can put their ballot straight into the counting machine. In-person voting ends at 5 pm on Monday, November 2, and mail ballots must reach election officials by 8 pm on Election Day. As of October 23, 419,189 ballots had been accepted (177,841 by mail, 241,348 in person) and 688,688 voters had applied, by the Secretary of State's count. Minnesota doesn't register voters by party, and this page doesn't read the county counts yet.
Polls close statewide. Anyone in line by 8 pm can still vote, and voters can register at the polls on Election Day. Counties upload precinct results to the Secretary of State's results site as they come in, absentee and Election Day ballots together, so there is no early-votes-first batch as in Texas or Georgia. This page reads each county's count from the Secretary of State's files every few minutes; the forecast moves as the bellwethers report, weighted by how many of their precincts are in.
The Twin Cities fill in. Small counties tend to finish first and lean Republican, so the statewide running total can show Tafoya ahead early. Hennepin and Ramsey together cast 31% of the 2024 vote; Harris won them by about 42 and 43 points. Judge the night by the bellwethers against their tie lines, not by the running total: Dakota's tie line is Flanagan +8.6.
County canvass. Every Minnesota ballot must have arrived by 8 pm on Election Day, so the unofficial count is close to complete by morning. County canvassing boards meet between the third and eighth day after the election (November 6 to 11) and settle provisional and challenged ballots.
State certification. The State Canvassing Board meets on the 16th day after the election, November 19, and declares the winner. If the margin is under a quarter of one percent of all votes (about 6,300 votes at 2022's turnout), the trailing candidate can ask for a hand recount at public expense; Minnesota has no automatic one. The 2008 Senate race, decided by 312 votes after a recount and a court challenge, is the reason people remember. The page doesn't model a recount.
Times are Central time. Counties post absentee and Election Day ballots together, precinct by precinct, as they finish counting. The method in six steps, then its track record on past races.
- All 87 counties are grouped by how they have moved relative to the statewide margin across seven statewide races (2016–2024). Each group is tied to one bellwether county.
- When a bellwether reports, its change from its 2024 President margin (Harris vs. Trump) is applied to every county in its group, and each group is weighted by its share of the vote.
- Early-vote readings are moved toward the expected final count. That uses only the 2026 Election Day tilt (Minnesota doesn't publish past results split by vote type), scaled by how much is still uncounted. Counties not yet in borrow the average change of those that are, pulled slightly toward the polls.
- Uncertainty combines the minimum uncertainty, how much of each county is still uncounted, and which counties haven't reported. The win chance and the 500 simulated nights both come from that.
- Until results post, the forecast is the polling average minus an allowance for how Minnesota polls have leaned (zero unless you change it), with a 5-point spread, the typical size of a final Minnesota poll-average miss since 2018. Where early votes are coming from trims nothing off it by default: each point the early electorate leans more Democratic than at the same point in 2024, measured by county, counts for the weight you set under "Fine-tune the assumptions", and in 2022 and 2024, measured against the election two years earlier, that lean did not predict how the polls missed. The five counties only start to matter on election night.
- Scheduled jobs in the cloud pull a Wikipedia poll table every morning and afternoon and, on election night, the Secretary of State's county results files every few minutes, and write to this page's data store, which updates open copies of the page without a reload. Minnesota's absentee counts sit behind a CAPTCHA, so the page doesn't read them.
Track record: past races predicted from these five counties alone
| Race predicted | Baseline race | Actual | Model | Miss |
|---|
These misses flatter the model. The five counties were picked by searching for the set that best fits these same six races. Tested on races it had not seen, the same search missed by about 1.3 points.
What's different in 2026
The model is built on 2016–2024. Here is what could make this race break from those patterns, and how the model handles each.
| Factor | What it could do | How the model handles it |
|---|---|---|
| An open seat, and two first-time Senate candidates | Tina Smith is not running again. Flanagan, the lieutenant governor since 2019 and Tim Walz's running mate in 2018 and 2022, won the August 11 Democratic-Farmer-Labor primary with 59.0% over Representative Angie Craig. Tafoya, a former NBC Sports sideline reporter, won the Republican primary with 52.1% over the party-endorsed Adam Schwarze (24.0%) and Royce White, the party's 2024 nominee. | Before results, the forecast is the polling average as it stands: Minnesota's record gives no allowance by default. The starting point for every county is the 2024 presidential race (Harris +4.2), so each county's swing measures how much better or worse Flanagan runs than Harris did there. |
| A governor's race with Klobuchar on the ballot | Walz is not seeking a third term. Senator Amy Klobuchar is the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nominee for governor and House Speaker Lisa Demuth the Republican one. Klobuchar won her 2024 Senate race by 15.7 points, 11.5 more than Harris on the same ballot, with the gap widest in rural Minnesota. | Voters who split their tickets show up in Flanagan's county margins directly. Klobuchar's 2018 and 2024 Senate races are left out of the model's past races because they ran so far ahead of the rest of the ticket. In What-if mode, enter Senate margins, not governor's race margins. |
| A midterm with Trump in the White House | In 2018, the last midterm under Trump, Walz and Flanagan won by 11.4 points and Smith won the special Senate election by 10.6, after Clinton had carried Minnesota by only 1.5 in 2016. Republicans last won a statewide race in Minnesota in 2006 and a Senate race in 2002. | Pick a turnout pattern under "Fine-tune the assumptions" ("Like 2022" or "Like 2018"). The "2018 again" what-if replays each group's swing from Walz and Flanagan's first win. |
| No record of early votes against the final count | Minnesota's results don't split absentee from Election Day votes, and counties report both together precinct by precinct. So there is no county-by-county record of how the count moves through the night. | The page uses its default spread for the move from first results to the final count; the "How much more Republican Election Day votes will be" setting doesn't come into play. On election night the page reads each county's count from the Secretary of State's results files and weighs a bellwether by the share of its precincts in. |
| Absentee counts by county, but no party registration | By October 23, 419,189 absentee and early ballots had been accepted, by the Secretary of State's count. Minnesota doesn't register voters by party, so the counts say where votes come from, not whom they favor. In 2024, 1,310,773 absentee and early ballots were accepted, about 40% of the presidential vote. | The early-vote tracker and its adjustment are off for Minnesota for now: the Secretary of State publishes each county's counts, but this page doesn't read them yet, and no same-day count from 2022 or 2024 has been found to compare them with. |
| Polls and Minnesota's record | The page's average of 7 recent polls had Flanagan ahead by 4.0 on October 24; the polls in it range from Flanagan +2 to +9. | Minnesota's final poll averages, taken the way this page takes them, have missed both ways: they overstated the Democrat in the 2020 Senate and presidential races, by 4.5 and 2.3 points, and in the 2024 presidential race by 1.4, and understated the Democrat in the other five statewide races since 2018, by 0.7 to 2.7 points. Minnesota's own average is less than a tenth of a point; pooled with the other states' midterm-year misses it rounds to zero, so there is no allowance by default. The spread around the polling average is 5 points, and the allowance is adjustable under "Fine-tune the assumptions." |
| Two more names on the ballot | Rebecca Whiting, the Libertarian, took 1.7% in the 2024 Senate race. Marisa Simonetti is running as an independent. | The forecast is the margin between Flanagan and Tafoya as a share of all votes cast, so third-party votes need no separate adjustment. |
- County returns 2016–2024: the Minnesota Secretary of State's results files for each general election (every federal, state and county race by county). Every race adds up to the certified statewide count exactly.
- County boundaries: us-atlas (Census cartographic boundaries)
- Absentee and early-vote turnout: not on this page yet. The Secretary of State's absentee data page has each county's accepted ballots, updated each business day.
- Polling average: Wikipedia, 2026 United States Senate election in Minnesota (poll table)
- Election-night results: not read live on this page yet. The Secretary of State's election results site posts each county's count as precincts report.
- In the news: headlines and links from Google News, GDELT and the state's own news outlets, read twice a day. Pollitrack never fetches or stores the articles themselves.