Former President Donald Trump is winning over independent voters in Minnesota. 

This is according to a new poll from Minn. Post and Embold Research. The complete results can be found here.

This is such a big deal because Minnesota is that state whose governor is Tim Walz (D), the same Walz whom Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen to be her running mate in the 2024 presidential election.

Ordinarily, a presidential candidate who picks a governor would expect to get a boost in the governor's home state, but that is not what appears to be happening here.

The results:

The poll was conducted between Sept. 4 and Sept. 8, 2024. The pollster surveyed some 1,616 likely 2024 voters in Minnesota, and the margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

Among other things, the pollster asked participants, "If the 2024 election for President were held today and the candidates were the following, who would you vote for?"

The options were Harris, former President Donald Trump, "another candidate," "not sure," or "would not vote.

Here, Harris did edge out Trump by about four percentage points, 48.8% to 44.6%. 3.6% went to "another candidate," 2.7% to "not sure," and 0.4% to "would not vote.

But, the key, here, is how Minnesota's independents voted. According to the pollster, "The newest poll also showed that independent voters favored Trump (40%) over Harris (23%)."

That's huge

There are several things worth pointing out here.

First off, the poll's overall results are not as bad as they appear to be. The New York Post reports, "Harris leads by just over 4 points, 48.8% to 44.6%, which is an even narrower margin than the 5-point lead she had in a poll a Minnesota TV station released two weeks ago."

The Post goes on to explain that independent voters appear to be the cause of this large swing in Trump's direction. "A big part of why Trump is so close in a state with a D+7 registration advantage: Independent voters are rallying to him by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio. Forty percent of those polled say they back the former president, while only 23% support Harris," it reports.

Trump, in recent presidential elections, has not been able to win Minnesota, although he came close in 2016. Then, Hillary Clinton won the state by less than 45,000 votes.

Give current trends, it appears very likely that Trump could repeat that performance or even surpass it in the 2024 election. And, if independents in Minnesota are representative of independents in other swing states, then Trump could be heading for a second term.