Flanagan leads Tafoya in SurveyUSA poll as Minnesota enters final weekend

Peggy Flanagan leads Michele Tafoya by seven percentage points in the final SurveyUSA statewide tracking poll reported by KSTP on Friday, as Minnesota enters the last weekend before its November 3 election. The Senate figures are 48% for Flanagan and 41% for Tafoya, with 7% undecided. The survey gives voters a dated picture of the contest for retiring Sen. Tina Smith's seat, not an election result or a guarantee of how the remaining electorate will vote.

The timing requires care. KSTP published its report October 30, but the original SurveyUSA tables list an October 29 release date and interviews conducted October 24–28. The poll therefore cannot measure reactions to developments occurring after those interviews. Minnesota residents also have practical decisions this weekend: state guidance lists Saturday and Sunday hours for voting early in person.

Friday's report and Thursday's poll release

KSTP's original report was published Friday evening and updated later that night. It describes SurveyUSA's final tracking poll before Election Day. The underlying report, numbered 28092, identifies KSTP-TV Minneapolis, KAAL-TV Rochester and WDIO-TV Duluth as the outlets for the statewide tracking work.

Flanagan is Minnesota's lieutenant governor and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nominee. Tafoya, the Republican nominee, is a former sports broadcaster. Libertarian Rebecca Whiting and independent Marisa Simonetti also appear in the poll. It is an open-seat Senate election, rather than a reelection contest for Flanagan's current state office.

The distinction between a survey's release and a station's publication prevents an artificial reset of the news clock. The interviews ended Wednesday, the tables carry Thursday's date and the station reported them Friday. Saturday coverage can explain what those results show while keeping all three dates visible. Calling them responses collected Friday night would describe a different survey.

What the seven-point gap can tell readers

The same polling series previously reported Flanagan at 45% and Tafoya at 42%; the new point estimates are 48% and 41%. That changes the reported gap from three to seven points. It does not, by itself, establish that the electorate moved exactly four points or that the difference between the two surveys is statistically decisive.

SurveyUSA's full ballot question also matters. Whiting and Simonetti each receive 2%, and 7% say they are undecided. Rounded percentages can sum to 100% without representing exact counts of people in the state's electorate. Nor should the undecided share be automatically divided between the two major candidates. The table records an answer at the time of the interview, not the eventual destination of every uncommitted vote.

A headline about who leads can be useful, but the underlying task for readers is to separate a measured preference from an outcome. The statewide election will be determined by actual ballots, including those already cast and those still to come. The poll cannot tell election officials to count a different set of votes or tell an individual that participation is unnecessary.

Who was interviewed and how

The methodology accompanying the tables says SurveyUSA interviewed 900 Minnesota adults through a nonprobability sample of internet-panel members supplied by Cint USA. Of those adults, 807 were identified as registered voters. The 714 people asked the substantive election questions said they would probably or definitely vote, or had already voted.

That screening is the basis for describing the results as a likely-voter survey. It is not a census of everyone registered in Minnesota. Respondents who were less certain they would participate were treated differently in the main estimate, so the definition of a likely voter is part of the result rather than a detail readers can safely ignore.

SurveyUSA says it weighted respondents to Census American Community Survey targets for gender, age, race, education and home ownership. Such weighting helps align a sample with selected population characteristics. It does not establish that panel participation, political interest or the eventual decision to vote is identical between respondents and everyone else.

The tables call the ±4.2-point measure a credibility interval. That terminology should be retained because this is a nonprobability panel, rather than relabeled as the conventional sampling margin of error of a randomly selected survey. Sampling uncertainty is also not the only possible source of polling error. Turnout assumptions and who responds remain relevant to interpreting any preelection estimate.

Turnout groups add context, not a vote count

SurveyUSA's likely-voter breakdown places 20% in the already-voted group, 65% among those who say they definitely will vote and 15% among those who say they probably will. Those are categories within the survey. They are not an official administrative report of how many Minnesotans have returned ballots.

The report says Flanagan leads by 28 points among respondents who already voted and by five among those who definitely intend to vote. Tafoya leads by six among those who probably will vote. Those differences help explain why a pollster's turnout screen can matter. They are not a basis for assuming that all early voters or all later voters behave alike.

Subgroup estimates also come from fewer respondents than the statewide total. A striking regional or demographic percentage should not be treated as though it has the precision of the full sample. For this story, the statewide estimates and the published method provide the core evidence; the subgroup patterns supply context without becoming separate election calls.

The issues behind the numbers

Asked to choose the most important issue from a list, 39% of likely voters selected inflation, living costs or gas prices. Fraud was selected by 17%, health care by 9% and immigration by 7%, according to the survey report. These figures describe which issue respondents chose. The fraud response, in particular, is not a finding that a specific person or organization committed a crime.

The same tracking report covers other statewide offices. It puts Amy Klobuchar at 51% and Lisa Demuth at 39% for governor, and Attorney General Keith Ellison at 49% against Ron Schutz's 41%. Those are separate elections with separate candidates. A Senate poll should not quietly become a claim that every statewide race has the same support or uncertainty.

Likewise, Ilhan Omar's seat is in the U.S. House, representing Minnesota's 5th Congressional District. It is not the open Senate seat in this survey. Readers following Minnesota's national politics need that distinction before comparing headlines about federal candidates, state officials and individual congressional districts.

The final weekend's voting options

The Minnesota secretary of state's election guidance lists early in-person hours at local election offices on Saturday, October 31, and Sunday, November 1, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, November 2, hours extend until 5 p.m. Check the actual local office and site before traveling, since additional locations and local arrangements can differ.

The same guidance distinguishes absentee return methods: ballots returned in person must reach the local election office by 5 p.m. on Election Day, while ballots returned by mail must be received by 8 p.m. A late postmark alone is not the receipt deadline described by the state. The official ballot tracker and polling-place finder are more useful for an individual's plan than a survey headline.

All Election Day polling places remain open until 8 p.m., and the state says people in line by that time can vote. The next decisive figures will come from the election process, not from converting a poll into an assumed result. Until then, SurveyUSA's report offers a clearly dated estimate: Flanagan ahead, a meaningful undecided share and an electorate whose final participation has not yet been counted.

Reporting checked October 30, 2026. The survey release is dated October29; interviews were October24–28. All voting hours above are local Minnesota time.

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