Exclusive: Poll Shows Tim Walz’s Popularity Down Post-VP Run

As speculation mounts over whether Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will seek a third term or reenter the national political stage, a new survey from Plymouth Union Public Research highlights a growing challenge: a frayed relationship with rural and blue-collar voters in his home state.

The July 15–16 poll of 600 likely general election voters shows Walz with a 49% job approval rating, but a significant 44% disapproval, driven in large part by dissatisfaction outside the Twin Cities. While both Walz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar maintain overall positive approval numbers, Klobuchar outpaces Walz by 17 points on disapproval. The survey attributes this gap to Walz’s heightened national profile during his unsuccessful 2024 vice presidential bid. In 2022, when he ran for governor as the incumbent, he received 52.3% of the vote, to Republican Scott Jensen's 44.7%.

According to the poll, 41% of voters believe joining Kamala Harris on the ticket was a mistake, and many of the voters who disapprove of Walz now are the same ones who opposed the Harris-Walz campaign. Among rural Minnesotans, just 34% approve of the governor’s performance, compared to 61% who disapprove. The same voters give Klobuchar a slight net positive approval (45% approve, 40% disapprove), underscoring how much ground Walz has lost even among Democrats in Minnesota.

The numbers are similarly grim among white voters (47% approve, 47% disapprove), hourly wage workers (44% approve, 46% disapprove), and those without a college degree (40% approve, 51% disapprove). A full 60% of rural voters say Walz “doesn’t look out for people like them,” and 55% describe him as “too woke”.

Yet the survey isn’t all bad news for the governor. It points to a clear path for political recovery if Walz chooses to remain in state politics: refocus on the bread-and-butter economic issues that first propelled him to office. Voters overwhelmingly rate “creating good-paying jobs,” “improving education,” and “understanding the needs of working people” as top priorities, with each issue registering as “very important” to more than 75% of respondents. Meanwhile, hot-button cultural issues like transgender health care for minors and immigration amnesty rank low in importance for many voters.

Notably, 64% of voters said they would be more likely to support Walz if he focused on creating jobs in blue-collar communities.

The question of whether Tim Walz will run for reelection is still up in the air. Since Minnesota switched to four-year terms for governor in the 1962 gubernatorial election, no governor has ever won three consecutive terms. Most former Minnesota Governors, after winning two terms, have decided not to run for reelection. Only Rudy Perpich in 1986 ran for a third term, and he lost that race. Never in Minnesota’s history as a state has a governor served for more than eight consecutive years.

Walz’s counterpart in Wisconsin, Tony Evers, who was also elected first in 2018 and then again in 2022, has announced that he will not seek reelection. His decision reflects a similar trend in his state, although Wisconsin once had a governor, Tommy Thompson, who served four consecutive four-year terms. Walz is expected to announce whether he is running again after the Minnesota State Fair ends on Labor Day.