Trump's impact looms over Minnesota races

9 morning news. Election day is the day after tomorrow. Truly crunch time for candidates looking to earn your vote. While at the same time, a record number of early voters have already cast their ballots. So we're looking at where are those early votes coming from? We'll get to that in just a moment. We're joined by Fox 9 political analyst Blaise Olson. Blaise, good to see you. I know it's a very busy time with lots to talk about. It is. I couldn't ask for an extra hour of sleep at a better time. That's for sure. The timing was perfect this year. Okay, let's get right into it. Let's start with the governor's race. Speaker Lisa Demuth now further behind in these latest polls. And this is after a couple of debates with Senator Amy Klobuchar. Usually the candidate who is behind is looking to, you know, gain some points. What do you think contributed to Demuth slipping? Well, I think there's just a slip you saw in this last poll from SurveyUSA that all the Democrats really slipped a little, but they're all still within the margin of error. And you look at behind the numbers, most undecideds are still in the suburbs, and they're women. And so I think that favors any surge that Demuth might encounter. And we've just seen so much early voting and so much energy on both sides. But it has felt like for the last week or so because of the national economy, The Democrats had a little more momentum and a little more energy the last week or so. We're also watching, of course, the Senate race very closely. President Trump has endorsed Michelle Tafoya, while at the same time, she clearly seems to be trying to distance herself from him. Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, quick to latch on to that endorsement. And we've seen some of the ads coming out. Your thoughts on the status and how close this race is right now? President Trump's really unpopular in the state and frankly, nationally. And Republicans across the country are dealing with the headwinds of President Trump in this economy. And so I think Michelle Tafoya is trying to thread a needle. On one hand, she needs Trump supporters to show up because one of the things is that Republicans don't turn out in midterms as much. On the other hand, she wants to show she's independent. She said that the The whole time, she's a pro choice Republican, etc. So I think But she is better known than Flanagan, too. And so Flanagan's team is really trying to define her and link her to Trump so that they can drive up her negatives. Sticking with some of President Trump and latest comments, he has called Minnesota elections corrupt. Chairs of both political parties have said that they disagree. How does this play into the midterms at this point where, again, as we mentioned, we've been mentioning, we're already seeing this record early voting turnout? This is really an outlier topic and it cuts two ways. One is people who think that elections are somehow corrupt. But Minnesota has such high voter turnout that if people thought they were corrupt, I don't know that people would turn out. Secondly, people want to cast their vote and they're doing it and they wanna do so cuz they wanna make sure it counts. And that's one of the reasons why we've seen this early voting surge. Okay, and looking specifically at that early voting turnout, you are looking at where those early votes are coming from. Expand on that. Yeah, a lot of them are coming from suburbs. And that shows that that's where the biggest tension is between crime and fraud and healthcare and the economy. That's where I think the most independent voters are, that's where the most split ticket voters are. And that makes what they've done unpredictable on who they voted for. I also think it means that some of these polls are gonna get turned off because if people have already voted, they're probably not gonna respond to a poll. All right. We're going to leave it there. But last to talk about, we know we'll see you a lot over the next couple of days, helping with our election coverage. So when you come into the newsroom, my desk has a big bowl of Halloween candy waiting for you to keep you going over these next couple of days. So thank you. Thanks, Leah. I will partake, but I do try to stay healthy these days. It's not like the old days where I could just live on sugar. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Especially right now. It's a marathon, not a sprint. So get your sleep and get your rest and we'll see you again soon. Thank you. Bye. ah