KSTP/SurveyUSA poll: Biden, Trump remain locked in tight battle for Minnesota
(KSTP) – Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump scored big victories across the country on Super Tuesday, including here in Minnesota. However, when it comes to the general election in Minnesota the two candidates are locked in a close race.
According to our exclusive KSTP-TV/SurveyUSA poll, Biden leads Trump by 4 percentage points, 42% to 38%, with 11% undecided and 9% preferring other candidates.
“We’ve got a competitive race here,” says Carleton College political analyst Steven Schier.
Although Biden’s percentage grew from 41% to 42% since last month, his approval rating is also at 42%, and Schier says that might be good news for Trump.
“He’s at 42% [in a match-up] against Trump, but his job approval is also at 42%. The question is, is that the ceiling for Joe Biden? If it is, then that’s good news for Donald Trump.”
But there’s also bad news for both candidates, with 20% of voters either undecided (11%) or preferring other candidates (9%).
“A lot of independents don’t want don’t want to vote for either of these people, which means there’s a lot of voters up in the air and this election could go either way,” Schier says. “You have two people who have occupied the White House for multiple years, yet you have 1 in 10 Minnesota voters who are undecided. That tells you that a lot of people are not enthusiastic about this choice.”
There is also a huge disparity between the Twin Cities metro area and Greater Minnesota.
Biden leads the Twin Cities and core suburbs 48% to 30%, where a large bloc of voters reside. However, Trump has big leads everywhere else in the state. Trump leads 45% to 37% in southern Minnesota; 57% to 26% in western Minnesota and 51% to 33% in northeastern Minnesota.
“The survey just really illustrates that we are not one Minnesota,” Schier says. “In terms of public opinion, we are two different Minnesotas.”
Now that Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican race and Dean Phillips dropped his Democratic campaign, it’s all but certain Biden and Trump will square off in 2024.
In our survey, 38% of respondents identified as Democrats, 35% as Republicans and 23% as independents.
SurveyUSA interviewed 2,075 total adults from the state of Minnesota on behalf of KSTP from Feb. 23-28. Of the adults, 1,837 were identified as being registered to vote; of the registered voters, 1,603 were determined by SurveyUSA to be likely to vote in the November general election and were polled.
This research was conducted online, using a nonprobability sample of online adult panelists chosen randomly by Lucid Holdings, LLC of New Orleans. The combined pool of survey respondents was weighted to US Census CPS targets for gender, age, race, and education.
View the full survey results below: