Pocketbook policy

Affordability tops the issues for Minnesota voters

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2026 issue of Thinking Minnesota magazine.

Every election, political pundits try to predict the top issue as voters head into the voting booth. In Minnesota, the fraud story has dominated the headlines for the concerned with “kitchen table” issues, painting the picture of a husband and wife huddled at their kitchen table, checkbook in hand. Today’s kitchen tables have been replaced by island past two years, even forcing Gov. Tim Walz to back out of his plan to run for a third term. But will it be the driving issue in November? Or will Minnesota voters be driven to the polls by national issues like the war in Iran, immigration, or their views on Donald Trump? It is, after all, a midterm election, in which voters often use the opportunity to voice displeasure with the party and president currently in power.

One issue everyone is talking about both nationally and here in Minnesota is affordability. That’s nothing new in politics. Affordability is just today’s variation on a popular theme. We used to say people “voted their pocketbook,” or that they were counter tops, and families now pay their bills online, but the metaphor stands. It’s clear the 2026 election will be decided by voters concerned about their ability to keep up with the cost of living. In other words, affordability.

With that in mind, American Experiment issued a new report in June, full of concrete steps to make Minnesota more affordable. The report, “Supplying Hope and Demanding Real Affordability,” includes a comprehensive list of 41 specific policy changes beginning with taxes and spending and extending to housing, utilities, health care, childcare, occupational licensing, and education. We used the latest Thinking Minnesota Poll to test some of these solutions with likely Minnesota voters.

As always, the Thinking Minnesota Poll was conducted by Meeting Street Insights, a nationally recognized polling operation based in Charleston, S.C. Interviews were completed June 2-4, 2026, among 500 registered Minnesota voters using a mix of cell phone and landline interviewing. The margin of error is +-4.38 percent.

We began with the broad question of whether family income is keeping up with the cost of living, something we asked in our December 2025 poll. Sixty-three percent of Minnesotans said their family income is falling behind the cost of living, three points higher than in December. Only seven percent said income is going up faster than the cost of living, while 28 percent said it’s staying about even. That level of economic pessimism and the fact that it has inched up since last year is enough to tell us affordability will be a top issue for Minnesotans in November.

Drilling down a level, we asked what people mean by the term affordability. We put together a list of specific things that drive affordability, beginning with taxes and extending to housing, childcare, health care, and utilities. As an afterthought, we added “reducing fraud, waste and improper payments in government programs” to the list. Reducing fraud emerged as the top affordability issue for poll respondents, with 45 percent saying it should be a focus for candidates in 2026. The next closest issue was lowering healthcare costs at 34 percent, followed by limiting property taxes (21 percent) and lowering housing costs (20 percent). Clearly, the fraud problem in state government is still on the minds of likely voters, even as we ask them specifically about affordability.

Understanding that affordability is affected by factors outside Minnesota, the Thinking Minnesota Poll focused on topics directly influenced by state government. Affordability is most directly affected by state taxes, and respondents told us taxes are too high. Sixty-one percent said income tax rates are too high, unchanged since the last time we asked in 2023. Sixty-six percent support limiting both the growth of state government spending and annual property tax increases to the rate of inflation plus population growth. Sixty-three percent support getting rid of unfunded mandates passed from state government onto local governments.

Beyond taxes, many state policies artificially restrict the supply of goods and services, thereby impacting their affordability. This economic reality drives Minnesota’s misguided policymaking in housing, utilities, health care, and childcare. For each topic, we queried a list of affordability solutions, including the misguided strategy of using taxpayer funds to subsidize the activity.

For housing, poll respondents favored allowing homeowners to build accessory dwelling units (78 percent), streamlining the housing permitting process (73 percent), and lowering government fees imposed on new housing (69 percent). Using taxpayer funds to help lower-income people and first-time homeowners purchase housing came in at 61 percent.

For health care, poll respondents favored making price information more user-friendly (97 percent), allowing Minnesota to join interstate licensing agreements (92 percent), requiring all Minnesota Medicaid recipients to live in Minnesota (87 percent), getting rid of costly health insurance mandates (80 percent), and requiring all Minnesota Medicaid recipients to have their eligibility reviewed annually (78 percent). Using taxpayer funds to help lower-income people pay for health care was further down the list at 71 percent.

When it came to energy solutions, only reducing taxes on electricity, natural gas, and gasoline (73 percent) polled better than using taxpayer funds to help lower-income people pay their utility bills (61 percent). For childcare, using taxpayer funds to help lower-income people pay for childcare was the surprising top choice of respondents at 68 percent. A majority of Minnesotans oppose reducing state childcare regulations (47 percent), easing hiring qualifications for some childcare center staff (56 percent), and letting staff supervise more children at one time (58 percent).

The results show that too many Minnesotans fail to understand how government subsidies in childcare, energy, housing and health care always result in higher prices for everyone. American Experiment must redouble our educational efforts on these misguided policies. Economist John Phelan says it best, “Minnesotans deserve real solutions to the very real problem of affordability. We need to lower taxes and stop pretending that throwing money at problems like childcare and housing shortages will actually solve anything.”