Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz now holds a 39% approval rating in his own state, lower than President Donald Trump's 41%, as a sprawling fraud scandal and a controversial state flag redesign continue to drag down the outgoing governor's standing with voters.
A Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy Inc. survey of 800 registered Minnesota voters, conducted June 8, 10 via live telephone interviews, found 53% of respondents disapprove of Walz's job performance. Only 8% said they were unsure. The poll was commissioned by KARE 11, the Minnesota Star Tribune, and the University of Minnesota's Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The numbers represent a 10-point drop from last year and mark the lowest approval of Walz's six years in office. For a governor who stood on a national ticket less than two years ago, the collapse is worth examining, and the reasons behind it tell a story about what happens when state leaders let fraud fester on their watch.
The cross-tabs are brutal. Just 1% of Republicans approve of Walz's performance. Among independents, the voters who decide close elections, approval sits at 32%. Even among Democrats, his support has softened to 73%, a number that should worry any incumbent in a state his party has carried for decades.
Walz's weakness with independents and rural voters is not new. As National Review noted in an earlier analysis, Walz had already burned his bridges with rural Minnesotans by the time of his 2022 reelection, and half of independents in the state viewed him unfavorably.
What changed is the fraud scandal, and the degree to which voters now hold Democrats responsible for it.
The Mason-Dixon poll found 45% of voters trust Republicans to fix the fraud issue, compared with 38% who trust Democrats. Another 14% said neither party. In a state where Democrats have dominated statewide elections for years, that gap is a warning sign that extends well beyond Walz himself.
Over the past year, the Trump administration deployed a fraud task force into Minnesota, resulting in raids, arrests, and further investigations. A final fraud report, referenced in Fox News Digital's coverage, described a "culture of tolerance" and pointed to billions in alleged losses to Minnesota taxpayers.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer has said Minnesota state leaders ignored whistleblower warnings and allowed $300 million in federal nutrition fraud, a decision Comer attributed to political reasons, specifically the desire to avoid accusations of racism.
Walz himself testified before the committee on March 4, 2026, in a hearing examining alleged misuse of federal funds for Minnesota social services and Medicaid programs. The DOJ has already charged 15 people in a massive Minnesota Medicaid fraud scheme targeting $90 million in taxpayer funds, and that appears to be only one piece of a much larger picture.
A former state fraud investigator has told lawmakers he was pressured to bury evidence of a childcare scam, adding another layer to the question of what state officials knew and when they knew it.
Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who represents Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, told Fox News Digital that the fraud explains why Trump now outpolls the sitting governor in his own state:
"President Trump is more popular than Tim Walz in his home state because Minnesotans are sick and tired of Walz siding with illegal aliens and Somali fraudsters over his hardworking, taxpaying constituents."
Emmer did not stop there. He framed the governor's entire tenure in terms of institutional failure:
"The legacy of Tim Walz will be the fires that destroyed Minneapolis, the fraud that he allowed to be stolen under his watch, and his failures that have harmed our great state."
Walz announced in early January that he would not seek a third term. He held a press conference at the Coliseum Building in Minneapolis on January 6, 2026, one day after making the withdrawal public, to discuss the state's new paid family leave policy.
In his withdrawal statement, Walz said, as Breitbart reported, "Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can't spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity." That framing cast the decision as selfless. But it came after months of intensifying scrutiny, including criticism that Walz had accused fraud critics of "white supremacy" and called investigative journalists conspiracy theorists.
The administration's broader posture toward Minnesota has shifted as well. President Trump had what he described as a "very good" call with Walz, and Border Czar Tom Homan was sent to oversee federal operations in the state, reporting directly to the president.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has targeted both Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar in its push to crack down on Minnesota welfare fraud, a signal that the federal investigation is far from over, even as Walz prepares to leave office in January.
The fraud scandal is not the only issue dragging Walz down. Fifty percent of voters in the Mason-Dixon poll disapprove of Minnesota's new state flag, which was approved by a 13-member commission created by the Democratic-controlled legislature in 2023.
Emmer called the flag "an embarrassment" and praised cities that are "actively removing it from their city halls and communities." He tied the two issues together in a single statement to Fox News Digital:
"Two issues that unite a majority of Minnesotans are the rejection of Tim Walz and his failed policies and our hatred for the Minnesota Somali state flag."
The flag controversy may seem minor next to a multibillion-dollar fraud scandal. But it matters because it reinforces the same narrative: a Democratic establishment in Minnesota that pursued ideological projects without broad public support, then bristled when voters pushed back.
State Sen. Mark Koran framed the governor's record as a case study in misplaced priorities. He told Fox News Digital that Walz "let his fraud crisis blow up and didn't do anything to fix it while he was busy shoving all this radical stuff into state government."
"After years of extreme far-left ideology and policies that don't help normal people, Minnesotans have had enough. His legacy is going to be the fraud crisis and desecrating the state flag. Minnesota is just tired of it."
State Sen. Michael Holmstrom was more pointed. "America rejected Tim Walz in 2024," he told Fox News Digital. "Now Minnesotans are following suit."
Holmstrom added: "The good news for Tim is that, now that his record is on full display, he could soon be the most popular guy in the jailhouse."
Townhall columnist Dustin Grage captured the broader political dynamic in a post on X: "Tim Walz has a lower approval rating than President Trump in deep blue Minnesota right now. That's how toxic the fraud has become for Democrats."
Walz's growing political isolation was evident even before the latest poll. His own party's DHS commissioner was dropped just before a confirmation hearing as fraud scrutiny intensified, a move that raised more questions than it answered about accountability inside the administration.
Fox News Digital reached out to Walz's office for comment on the poll. No response was reported.
The poll did not include Trump's disapproval number in Minnesota, so a direct apples-to-apples comparison of net approval is not possible from the available data. The margin of error was also not specified. But the topline finding, a sitting Democratic governor trailing a Republican president in a state Democrats have carried in every presidential election since 1972, speaks for itself.
Walz is leaving office. The fraud investigations continue. The arrests are mounting. And the voters who have to live with the consequences of years of lax oversight are making their judgment clear, one poll at a time.
When the people who elected you trust the other party more to clean up the mess you left behind, that's not a polling blip. That's a verdict.