The new Minnesota state flag is deeply unpopular, poll finds

Walker Orenstein, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Jun 17, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota’s new flag has dismal support, trailing even President Donald Trump’s lagging approval rating.

Just a third of likely Minnesota voters approve of the new blue-and-white design adopted in 2024, while half are opposed. Another 20% are not sure if they liked the new flag, according to a new Star Tribune/KARE 11/Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication Minnesota Poll.

The results underscore how the flag has become a partisan flashpoint in Minnesota, and one that has particularly caught fire among Republicans. GOP elected officials and candidates have widely pledged to return to the old design or call a public vote on the new one in response to a surge in opposition from the Republican base.

City and county officials in rural and suburban areas have already voted to continue flying the 1983 flag, which they view as holding historic value. The State Capitol is the only building in Minnesota required by law to fly the state flag.

“I thought that the previous flag really kind of represented the history of our state,” said David Arendale, a Republican from Fridley and retired University of Minnesota professor who taught history courses.

The new one, he said, is “a nice clean design, I guess, but boy it certainly doesn’t mean anything to me from a historical point of view.”

The Minnesota poll’s findings are based on interviews with 800 likely Minnesota voters and was conducted June 8-10. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The polling shows 90% of Republicans disapprove of the flag and only 2% support it, staggering numbers that illustrate the depths of what some in the GOP view as an effort to paint over history in favor of progressive values.

A modest majority of Democrats approved of the redesigned flag, another sign of the partisan divide on the issue.

David O’Neill, a 44-year-old member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from Shoreview, said the new flag is a much better design and said vexillology experts rated the old one poorly. It was not unique, was hard for kids to draw, and suffers from other aesthetic issues, he said.

“Nothing about it is better” than the new flag, O’Neill said.

O’Neill said he liked some other potential new flags better but thinks the final design is not going to look dated in the coming decades and is easy to recognize.

Still, the new flag was not overwhelmingly popular with the DFL either. Nearly 30% were not sure about it and 16% disapproved.

More than half of political independents in the poll also opposed the new flag, and opposition was not limited to deep-red parts of greater Minnesota. In the Twin Cities suburbs and exurbs, 53% opposed the redesigned flag.

The flag did not have majority support even inside Hennepin and Ramsey counties.

JoAnne Andres, a 70-year-old Democrat from Farmington, said she felt the new flag was “crammed down our throats” without public input, and the public should have a greater chance to voice an opinion.

“I like the tradition of the old flag,” she said.

Minnesota’s old flag included the previous state seal, which showed a white settler plowing a field in the foreground while a Native American man on horseback rides into the sunset.

Minnesota lawmakers started the process of redesigning the flag in 2023, arguing the old flag emphasized how colonial settlers displaced Indigenous populations.

The Legislature, controlled by Democrats at the time, voted to create an independent commission to review potential designs. Minnesotans submitted more than 2,000 designs for the potential new flag and state seal, which generated more than 20,000 comments.

The commission narrowed down the submissions to three finalists and used one as the basis for a flag with a deep blue Minnesota shape, topped with an eight-point star facing north. The design also includes a solid block of light blue meant to represent the state’s water.

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(Briana Bierschbach of The Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.)

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