It’s very early in the 2024 election year, but our latest KSTP-TV/SurveyUSA poll shows Minnesota U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar could be headed for a tougher-than-usual race.

Klobuchar has won her three Senate races by 20 points in 2006, 35 in 2012 and 24 in 2018. If she wins a fourth term in 2024, she would become just the third Minnesota senator to win four or more terms and the first in more than 80 years.

In a survey of 1,594 registered voters likely to vote in November, 49% say they would vote for Klobuchar, 33% for a generic “Republican opponent,” 15% are undecided and four percent prefer someone else. At the time our poll went into the field, no significant Republican candidate with party backing had emerged.

This week, Navy veteran and banker Joe Fraser announced he plans to challenge Klobuchar as a Republican candidate.

“She definitely would be favored in this race, but she doesn’t seem as strong as she was before,” says Carleton College political analyst Steven Schier. “Usually, Amy Klobuchar’s job approval has been well above 50% so it’s interesting to see her reelect number has fallen below 50% to 49%.”

Still, Klobuchar’s approval rating in the poll is 54%, with only 33% disapproving.

Schier says it’s possible Klobuchar might have to deal with voter fatigue for a candidate running for a fourth term, a rarity in Minnesota politics. “It could be that people get tired of a long-term incumbent and that could be a problem for her,” Schier says.

SurveyUSA interviewed 2,100 total adults from the state of Minnesota from Jan. 24 to Jan. 29. Of the adults, 1,853 were identified as being registered to vote; of the registered voters, 1,594 were determined by SurveyUSA to be likely voters in the November general election and were asked the substantive questions which follow.

This research was conducted online, using a nonprobability sample of online adult panelists chosen randomly by Lucid Holdings LLC of New Orleans. The combined pool of survey respondents was weighted to U.S. Census CPS targets for gender, age, race, and education, to U.S. Census ACS targets for home ownership and to recalled 2020 presidential vote.

Of those responding to the Senate race survey, 35% described themselves as Republicans, 38% as Democrats and 23% as independents.