Democrats may be sleeping on a Senate race they likely assumed they had in the bag. After all, it's taking place in the deep-blue leftist utopia of Minnesota – home of Democrats Tim "Jazz Hands" Walz and Peggy "Crazy Eyes" Flanagan – we're talking about here.

A new poll (well, survey) that nobody is talking about might disabuse the left of the notion that they have this race, between the aforementioned Flanagan and Republican Michele Tafoya, all locked up. 

The League of American Workers survey, conducted by TIPP Insights and released Tuesday, has sitting lieutenant governor Flanagan leading Tafoya by a measly two points – 40 percent to 38 percent with 14 percent undecided – among registered voters. That has Tafoya within the survey's margin of error of 2.7 percent.

These aren't the kinds of numbers Democrats expect to see in a state that hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972.

There's another interesting number buried in the survey results that make Tafoya's strong showing all the more interesting: President Trump is 22 points underwater in the state, with 36 percent approving of his job performance and 58 percent disapproving.

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Then comes this plot twist: a recent study by pollster Patrick Ruffini of Echelon Insights looked at more than 3,300 Senate polls from the last four election cycles and found that the myth that summertime polling tended to favor Democrats was actually true. To the tune of nearly 6 percentage points.

Here's Ruffini:

Polling error peaks at 5.9 points too Democratic sometime in late July, and doesn’t start coming down until late August, before settling into an average error of D+2.6 on election day.

The Minnesota survey showing Tafoya trailing Flanagan by only two points was conducted from August 31 to September 2, 2026.

And we may have a good idea where Tafoya can find the votes she needs to close the narrow gap.

As RedState noted last month, Minnesota is one of several battleground states whose economies are closely tied to Canada, and there is, of course, an escalating trade fight with our neighbors to the north. This trade fight offers both risk and opportunity to Republican candidates – and in Minnesota, in particular, because it is a major dairy-producing state.

Tafoya has an opening to make the argument less about tariffs themselves and more about whether Minnesota farmers are getting a fair shake from Canada. She also has the opportunity to put some room between herself and the president.

Peggy Flanagan, meanwhile, is rabidly pro-trans, anti-Israel, and wants to "rip apart" Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She's so radical that even the Minnesota Star Tribune described her as adhering unapologetically to her “leftist views."

But, apparently, leftist views aren't the only things that play well amongst Minnesota's voters, at least according to this TIPP survey. Michele Tafoya may well be rewriting the playbook on what a Republican can do in Minnesota.