Minnesota · Governor

Who is running?

Amy Klobuchar (Democratic), Lisa Demuth (Republican), Steven Young (Green). The margin below is Amy Klobuchar minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Minnesota elects a governor and lieutenant governor on November 3, 2026. Democratic incumbent Tim Walz ran for a third term but withdrew in January after a scandal over fraud in state-funded social services. The text notes that Republicans have not won a Minnesota gubernatorial election since 2006 and that the winner will be the state's first female governor. The state profile gives a median age of 38.6 and a college share of 0.4.

The DFL nominee is U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who entered after Walz's withdrawal and won the primary with 89.7%; her running mate is Ben Schierer, former mayor of Fergus Falls. The Republican nominee is House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who won with 43.4% over Mike Lindell, endorsed by Donald Trump, at 32.5% and Kendall Qualls, endorsed by the state party, at 21.4%; her running mate is Ryan Wilson. Green nominee Steve Young is also running. The latest finance reports in the text are from May 31, 2026, when Klobuchar had raised $7,045,318 with $3,859,683 on hand and Demuth $360,892 with $517,679 on hand.

All seven raters listed call the race D, including the Cook Political Report (August 27, 2026) and Decision Desk HQ (September 23, 2026). The text's polling average is Klobuchar 50.1%, Demuth 39.3%. The most recent polls are co/efficient (R) (September 14–15, 2026) at Klobuchar 47%, Demuth 45%, and KSTP/SurveyUSA (September 9–14, 2026) at 47% to 40%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: facts.forecast carries no basis field.; The text gives no presidential results for Minnesota and no margin for the 2022 gubernatorial race.; No finance reports after May 31, 2026, so nothing on general-election money.; Inside Elections' rating is dated September 3, 2025 in the text, which may be a typo for 2026.; Raters' calls are given only as 'D', with no Lean/Likely/Safe grade.; Endorsement sections are empty in the text.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 33a8750febcb; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 2.7 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.1 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -1.7 and +17.7 points. Election day: -2.5 to +20.6. The election-day interval is 3.8 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 7.35 points, made of race-specific polling error 46%, drift to election day 30%, latent opinion 13%, correlated polling error 11%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

7 polls, most recent 2026-09-15. 29% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Amy Klobuchar ahead of Lisa Demuth. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -0.0 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls.

Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run 620f39d7-17bc-4eff-9881-6f2f0d857eb4 and election-day run cb2e216d-fe2b-463c-88ab-a0661ec8a6c5, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.