The disconnect between The Current Thing and what voters care about

Comparing tweets from the Walz Administration to the top issues of voters.

An old cliche in politics is “keep the main thing the main thing.” Minnesota is less than a month away from the state’s primary election. Let’s see what is on the minds of the state’s top two elected officials.

Back in early December the Center polled voters on what Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s top priorities should be for 2022 (Figure 7). The top three items were, in order, “responding to the surge in violent crime,” “creating jobs and helping the economy,” and “improving schools and education.”

That list has held up pretty well into mid-Summer. A Rasmussen national poll of voter priorities released on June 21 found the top three issues to be gas prices, inflation, and the economy. Crime came in fourth with education in sixth.

In an unscientific survey, we examined the tweets from the official accounts of Gov. Walz (@GovTimWalz) and his Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (@LtGovFlanagan). Together, during the last 30 days (June 20 to July 19), the pair has tweeted 90 times (counting threads as a single tweet and not counting retweets). Here are the top concerns of the Walz Administration.

Only the crime issue makes the Walz/Flanagan top five. All of the tweets on public safety (crime) have come after the July 4 “unrest” in Minneapolis. Neither abortion, gun violence, nor LGBTQ+ issues appear on the Rasmussen list.

Inflation and jobs appear rarely in the Walz/Flanagan timeline, with no school tweets during this summer break. Soccer tweets outnumber all of the Walz tweets on jobs.

Stay tuned…