Minnesota Poll: Four takeaways on how voters are feeling right now

Most Minnesotans don’t approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance nor his immigration policies. They don’t much care for Congress either, and Gov. Tim Walz’s support is slipping too.

Those are some of the headlines from the latest Star Tribune/Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication Minnesota Poll.

But the poll holds more nuggets worth exploring.

Here are a few key takeaways:

Just 3% of Republican poll respondents said they disapprove of Trump’s job performance, while a whopping 97% approve.

Ninety-plus percent of Republicans say they support Trump’s immigration policies and his deployment of troops at immigration protests, and believe the nation’s economy has stayed the same or improved since he took office in January.

(More information about the poll methodology, a demographic breakdown of the sample and a map of the poll regions can be found at startribune.com/methodology.)

The poll is based on interviews with 800 Minnesota registered voters conducted June 16-18, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Ninety-six percent of Republicans say the president has acted within his authority, while a near equal number of Democrats said the opposite.

But Republican support was a bit softer for some Trump policies, especially when our pollster left out the president’s name in questions.

About 75% of Republicans said they support the huge cuts to Medicaid in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and cuts to federal funding for science and public health research. And only 61% of Republicans said they think all undocumented immigrants should be deported.

This week’s poll found the governor’s approval rating has dropped to 49% — the same figure it was in a 2021 Minnesota Poll.

But his support under that top-line number has changed.

Back then, Walz’s approval ratings in Ramsey and Hennepin counties, which include Minneapolis, St. Paul and surrounding liberal-leaning inner-ring suburbs, was at 68%. Now, it’s grown to 77%.

But his support outside of those counties is shrinking. In 2021, 56% and 51% of people polled in southern Minnesota and northern Minnesota, respectively, disapproved of him. In our latest poll, those figures jumped to 64% and 66%.

His disapproval rate in other metro-area counties, which includes outer suburbs and some rural areas, has grown from 52% to 60%.

The data suggests that the urbanization of the DFL base, which we also noted in 2022, is continuing.

Our pollster’s sample included 134 respondents who described themselves as independents who didn’t lean toward the DFL or GOP. With a small sample of true independents, we should be careful not to draw too many conclusions, but the poll found a majority of them also disapprove of all of the politicians and most of the policies they were asked about.

Fifty-eight percent disapprove of Trump’s job performance and 54% thought the same of Walz’s. About 60% disapprove of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

About six in 10 oppose Trump’s cuts to science and public health funding, his proposed Medicaid cuts and immigration policies, and say the president has acted beyond his authority.

So what do independents want? Just one question in our poll garnered support from a majority of them: Sixty-seven percent said they believe undocumented immigrants who do not have criminal records should be allowed to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements.

The poll found 67% of women disapprove of Trump’s job performance while 60% approve of Walz’s.

The gender divide tracks with a 2022 Minnesota Poll that found a 20-point gender gap in Walz’s approval rating then.

Most women also opposed all of the Trump policies pollsters asked about and had a negative view of Republicans in Congress. But a solid majority — 55% — also disapproved of congressional Democrats.

Fifty-eight percent of men, meanwhile, approve of Trump’s job performance and 62% disapprove of Walz’s. Some Trump policies, including those concerning immigration, also yielded strong support among men.

Trump’s cuts to science and public health funding and proposed Medicaid cuts, however, were unpopular among men, each yielding less than 50% support.