MN Senate · 2026
Democrats are heavily favored to win this seat
98% probability
Candidates
Last verified 2026-09-14.
Margaret Flanagan is an American politician and Ojibwe activist serving as the 50th lieutenant governor of Minnesota since 2019.
Michele Joan Tafoya is an American journalist and sports broadcaster for ABC, NBC, CBS, and ESPN.
Open seat -- the current officeholder is a Democrat, who is not running.
Not applicable to this race: Candidate fundraising split (state filings), State campaign finance data available · Built on annual structural data, current release 2026-05-29: State mood: Domestic Stability, State mood: Isolation. See /status for current data freshness.
Why we think this
- This state's baseline partisan lean favors Democrats by about 23 points of margin before anything else is considered.
- This is an open seat: the current officeholder (a Democrat) is not on the ballot, which tends to make the race more competitive than a defended seat.
- Separately, current public mood in this state specifically is shifting strongly toward Democrats, on top of the structural baseline.
- Independently, the national midterm environment is shifting every race this cycle modestly toward Democrats -- a separate, nationwide force layered on top of the state-specific factors above, not a restatement of them.
Model details -- coefficients, calibration, and the full technical decomposition.
Model sengov-2026-govmoney-v1 · computed 2026-09-16