In just four weeks, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., has seen her staggering 11-point lead in Minnesota completely washed out.
The race between the Democratic senator proudly called the “highest ranking planned Parenthood executive in US politics” and an unapologetically conservative former talk radio host, Rep. Jason Lewis, should be turning heads as both a critical race in its own right and a potential sign of much larger changes in the 2020 race.
“We are seeing traditionally Democratic voters, oftentimes union members, in industrial areas flocking to the Republican Party in droves,” Lewis said in a statement to The Federalist. “A perfect example of this is the Minnesota Iron Range, where President Trump and I received the endorsement of six mayors who are lifelong Democrats. It is this realignment that has made Minnesota a swing state even though it has been reliably blue for decades.”
The six most recent polls in the race tell an unsettling story for Democrats treating a Blue Wave as a forgone conclusion. According to RealClearPolitics, Smith’s lead shrunk to 10 percent, then 8 percent, then 7 percent, then 4 percent week by week, with the two most recent polls showing a race within the margin of error at 3 percent and just 1 percent. The tracker now marks the race as a toss-up for the first time in the election cycle.
To Lewis, it is “abundantly clear” why Minnesotans are taking a second look Republican candidates close to election day: radicalism in the Democratic Party. “When a mainstream political party and its standard bearers are pushing to defund the police, it’s safe to say that something is dangerously wrong.”
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