A new poll in the deep blue state of Minnesota finds President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in a virtual tie, with Biden getting 46.9% of the vote and Trump garnering 46.5% of the vote.
The poll was conducted by the Trafalgar Group between August 15-18. Although there was some naysaying by members of the Left that fivethirty-eight.com gives the Trafalgar Group a C-minus for accuracy, fivethirtyeight.com gives the Emerson College poll a grade of A-minus, and an August 8-10 Emerson College poll found Trump within 2 points of Biden, with Biden getting 51% of the vote and Trump 49%.
The movement of the state toward Trump is borne out by the fact that two polls in July found the state overwhelmingly for Biden; one showing a 7-point lead and another with a massive 10-point lead.
Minnesota has not voted for a GOP presidential candidate since 1972, the longest stretch for any state in the union. In 1984, it was the only state of the fifty not to vote for Ronald Reagan, instead voting for native son Walter Mondale. In 2016, Trump lost Minnesota to Hillary Clinton by less than 45,000 votes.
On Monday, Trump became the first president since George W. Bush in 2004 to visit Mankato, Minnesota. GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan stated, “Here in southern Minnesota, we have a huge agricultural community. It’s important that we’re standing with our farmers and setting up the best trade deals for them so that they can continue to flourish and grow. On the other side of your district, you’ve got the Mayo Clinic. Health care is such an important thing in Minnesota.”
Trump stated in Mankato, “Joe Biden is the puppet of left-wing extremists, trying to erase our borders, eliminate our police, indoctrinate our children, vilify our heroes, take away our energy. You know all about that. Take away our energy. If you can believe it. No fossil fuel. Destroy our Second Amendment, attack the right to life, and replace American freedom with left-wing fascism. Left-wing. We’re going to left wing all the way. Fascists. They are fascists. Some of them, not all of them, but some of them, but they’re getting closer and closer. We have to win this election, but the proud people of Minnesota will not let this happen.”
“I learned that when I came up here, they had specialty milk, a little thing, specialty milk,” Trump continued. “And I met a farmer and he said what had happened with specialty milk. And that got me over the edge. And I said, ‘We’ve got to change this,’ because you were taken, Tom. You were taken advantage of by Canada very badly and by Mexico and by China and by Japan and by friends and foe. And in many cases, friends who are worse than the foe. For years, you watched as politicians like Sleepy Joe Biden, who’s been in office for 47 years, allowed foreign nations to crush Minnesota’s mining. Look at your mining industry, it was crushed by dumping tons and tons of cheap iron and steel into our country. I saw what was happening. I did something about it. I did something about it.”
A two-day Women for Trump statewide bus tour started on Tuesday in Hermantown and traveled through northern and central Minnesota before arriving in Mankato Wednesday.