2026 ELECTION · POLL AND OUTCOME REVIEW
Minnesota: the 12-point poll lead and Klobuchar’s projected win
SurveyUSA’s final tracking poll put Amy Klobuchar ahead. NBC projects her as the winner; similar-looking margins still require careful denominators and final returns.
The ordering agrees
SurveyUSA’s final Minnesota tracking poll had Democratic-Farmer-Labor Amy Klobuchar at 51% and Republican Lisa Demuth at 39%. That lines up with NBC’s projected winner, Klobuchar. We still need a final count before judging the poll’s 12-point margin.
The original survey record
SurveyUSA interviewed October 24–28 and released the report October 29 for KSTP-TV, KAAL-TV and WDIO-TV. Its substantive election questions used 714 people identified as likely to vote or as having already voted. The original governor table lists a ±4.2-point credibility interval. Green Party candidate Steven Young had 3%, while 8% were undecided. The displayed shares total 101%, reflecting rounding; we preserve the original values instead of adjusting a candidate’s published number to force a 100% total. This original sample figure is retained rather than substituted from a secondary summary.
The official vote snapshot
The Minnesota Secretary of State’s text file lists 1,569,692 votes for the Klobuchar–Ben Schierer ticket and 1,206,573 for the Demuth–Ryan Wilson ticket. Young’s ticket has 51,402 and write-ins 2,474, bringing the reported total to 2,830,141. Klobuchar’s reported-vote lead is 363,119, or 12.83 points of that total. The file was retrieved November 4 at 4:04:31 PM Eastern and carries an original Last-Modified header of 3:58:19 PM Eastern. It has no embedded count clock, so we identify that header as file modification time.
A close-looking margin is not a final grade
The survey’s 12-point lead and this file’s 12.83-point reported lead are numerically close. Their difference is about 0.83 points, but it is a provisional margin difference, not a final polling-error score. The official file lists all 4,105 precincts as reporting, which measures precinct units. It does not establish certification or guarantee that every eventual ballot adjustment is complete. NBC’s separately maintained page estimates 98.8% of expected votes counted, illustrating why precinct reporting and ballot completion need distinct labels.
How to finish the comparison
A completed audit should freeze the final result, state whether all-candidate or two-candidate shares are used, and account for the poll’s rounded toplines. It should also preserve undecided respondents as part of the original survey record rather than guessing how they voted. Matching the winner ordering is already observable; attributing any remaining numerical gap to turnout, late movement or a particular survey method would require evidence beyond these two snapshots. This article therefore presents a reproducible first comparison with the remaining uncertainty visible.
| Candidate or response | Poll share |
|---|---|
| Amy Klobuchar | 51% |
| Lisa Demuth | 39% |
| Steven Young | 3% |
| Undecided | 8% |
| Candidate or ticket | Votes | Reported share |
|---|---|---|
| Amy Klobuchar | 1,569,692 | 55.46% |
| Lisa Demuth | 1,206,573 | 42.63% |
| Steven Young | 51,402 | 1.82% |
| WRITE-IN | 2,474 | 0.09% |
| Total | 2,830,141 | 100.00% |
Original sources and method
- Original pre-election poll tables · SurveyUSA / KSTP
- NBC News projected-winner race page · NBC News
- Minnesota official governor text file · Minnesota Secretary of State
- SurveyUSA original poll field and release dates · SurveyUSA
Poll margin = first candidate’s published percentage minus second candidate’s. Provisional count margin = 100 × (first candidate’s votes − second candidate’s votes) ÷ all reported votes. A winner projection and a certified count are distinct. Counts remain unofficial; this story does not treat either the retrieval clock or the network’s projection as a final tally.