North Dakota
Port: Armstrong campaign releases polling showing 41-point lead over Miller
MINOT — The North Dakota Republican Party’s gubernatorial primary between Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller and U.S. Rep. Kelly Armstrong has been heated. Both candidates have spent furiously on promoting their campaigns, and at times
the rhetoric between the two has grown vicious.
But if polling just released to me by the Armstrong campaign is to be believed, the race isn’t particularly close. In a survey conducted by Guidant Polling & Strategy, which was conducted May 4-8, Armstrong has a commanding 41-point lead over Miller.
The survey shows Armstrong leading Miller among Republican primary voters 60% to 19%, with another 19% undecided. That lead remains consistent among voters aged 65+ (Armstrong 61%, Miller 19%), self-described conservative voters (Armstrong 62%, Miller 19%) and voters who say they have an established opinion of both candidates (Armstrong 64%, Miller 24%).
The poll suggests that voters view Armstrong far more favorably than they do Miller. Among likely Republican primary voters, Armstrong is viewed favorably by 69% of respondents, with just 19% having a negative view.
Miller, meanwhile, had mixed numbers. Just 32% of respondents said they view her favorably, 33% said they view her unfavorably, and after her campaign spent over $1.2 million on broadcast and cable television ads alone, 22% said they have no opinion of Miller.
“The last career politician who claimed to be up 40 points wound up losing in a landslide to Doug Burgum,” Miller spokesman Dawson Schefter told me in response to this poll. “Confident campaigns don’t release internal polls and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars falsely attacking their opponents. This is a clear attempt to spin the media from a candidate on the defensive about his record as a politician and trial lawyer. I’d put this poll in the trash where it belongs.”
To Schefter’s point, all polling released by a campaign should be taken with a grain of salt. Campaigns release polling data to serve their electoral agenda, not inform the public. We also don’t have any independent and publicly available polling to filter our perception of Armstrong’s numbers.
But that doesn’t mean these numbers are wrong. While I’m not sure I would have guessed that Armstrong’s lead was this prodigious, I have felt for some time that the congressman is winning. Armstrong’s poll strikes me as accurate. Or, at least, in the ballpark. The poll does jibe with information about other polls from independent sources that have been shared with me, though I wasn’t made privy to the specific details.
Jeremy Turley / Forum News Service
Gov. Doug Burgum, who is backing Miller’s campaign (though not quite as ardently as I had expected; more on that in a moment), might rebut these numbers by alluding, as Schefter did, to polling in the 2016 gubernatorial primary,
which showed him down 49 points
to Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem roughly a month after he announced his campaign. Burgum, of course, went on to win the primary in a landslide by nearly 21 points.
Burgum was fond of touting that poll during his long-shot presidential bid earlier this political cycle, but I’m not sure it’s an apt comparison for Miller. That poll was released in early March. It’s currently mid-May, with primary day looming on June 11. Also, remember that 2016 was the year of the outsider. It was the year Donald Trump stormed through the Republican primary to the White House. Burgum cast himself as a political outsider that cycle, and whatever the truth of the claim, the voters bought it. But that was eight years ago.
Miller’s campaign has seemed like a copy-and-paste of Burgum’s 2016 effort, right down to the buzzwords and much of the personnel. Only, it’s not 2016 anymore, and Miller, for all her personal achievements and compelling characteristics, isn’t Burgum.
The lazy analysis of Burgum’s political success assumes his money is the difference maker. And, don’t get me wrong, Burgum’s ability and willingness to spend gobs on his political agenda matters, but crediting his success to spending overlooks the fact that he’s always been a strong candidate. He’s warm and charismatic in person. He can work a room. He knows how to win people over on a personal level.
Burgum’s campaign strategies can be hit-and-miss. For example, he spent millions trying to sway legislative races as governor,
and the results were decidedly mixed.
But when Burgum himself is the candidate, when he’s personally engaged and not just spending money on ads and mailers, his success rate is much higher.
One thing we’ve learned about Miller during the campaign process is that she’s uncomfortable with in-person retail politics, and I think that’s cost her.
So, too, has Burgum’s absence on the campaign trail. We’ve all witnessed the spectacle of our current governor campaigning for a spot in a second Trump administration, be it as vice president or a cabinet position. That project has kept Burgum out of state a lot and left him with little time outside of gubernatorial duties to devote to Miller’s campaign.
In summary, how accurate is this poll? Though I wish we had publicly available independent polling corroborating the results, my gut tells me it’s fairly close to reality. Which isn’t to say that Miller can’t move the needle between now and June 11.
BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – North Dakota leaders unveiled an initiative aimed at getting more oil out of the Bakken, using enhanced oil recovery and CO₂.
Senator John Hoeven said the effort is getting a boost from $36 million from the Department of Energy for “Crack the Code 2.0,” a $157 million initiative with state and industry funding.
Hoeven said the goal is to use CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery, calling it “an important, usable, valuable commodity” and saying, “We’re linking our coal plants with our oil and gas producing companies to do it.”
Funding will be used to develop technology to make enhanced oil recovery profitable and viable, and then implement it in North Dakota oil fields in a number of pilot projects.
Hoeven said current recovery rates in the Bakken are limited.
“We’re only producing about 10 to 12% of the oil out of that shale,” he said, “But with EOR, advanced oil recovery techniques, we can double it. We can take it from 10 to 12% up to 25% or better.”
Hoeven said the effort is also tied to electricity demand, saying North Dakota will “produce more electricity for a company that wants to do AI, that wants to do data centers, needs more and more electricity,” and that “it isn’t just about oil and gas.”
North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness said the pilot projects are expected to start soon.
“We hope to see these pilots putting their technologies into the ground sometime late this year, first quarter of next year,” said Ness.
“So I would expect by this time next year, we’re going to maybe potentially begin to see what are some of the results early on,” Ness added. “And again, this is going to take multiple, multiple swings at this thing. It’s not going to just happen. If it was easy, we’d be doing it. Nobody’s done it anywhere in the world. This is where we’re going to crack the code.”
Copyright 2026 KFYR. All rights reserved.
Three years after a deal with Fairview was called off, South Dakota-based Sanford Health is getting into the Twin Cities market with a new merger.
On Friday, the health system announced that it will combine with North Memorial Health.
Fairview, Sanford call off planned merger
Under the merger, Sanford says the organization will invest $600 million to strengthen the Robbinsdale hospital and double the Maple Grove hospital’s size.
Sanford is the largest rural nonprofit health system in the country, with 58 hospitals and roughly 56,000 employees across the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Wyoming and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. North Memorial operates two hospitals in Robbinsdale and Maple Grove, along with several other clinics, employing more than 6,500 people.
If completed, the health systems plan to keep some local leadership in place, including North Memorial CEO Trevor Sawallish, and two North Memorial board members will serve on the combined system’s board. However, the overall company will be led by Sanford CEO Bill Gassen.
The companies say they expect the merger to close later this year, as long as regulatory processes don’t cause delays.
Sanford’s previous attempt to merge with Fairview was called off in 2023, eight months after initially announcing the planned merger. Many Minnesotans raised concerns about that transaction, including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, although some of that was due to the University of Minnesota’s partnership with Fairview and the possibility of an out-of-state company running the state’s flagship medical school.
As with most mergers, concerns are still likely to arise about possible cutbacks and the impact on the state’s healthcare quality. However, the deal seems more likely to be completed than Sanford’s past attempts.
Reaction
SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa, who represents over 1,000 workers at North Memorial, called the news “worrisome.”
“At a time when healthcare costs are skyrocketing for Minnesota families and frontline healthcare workers are getting squeezed by short staffing levels, this latest attempt at consolidation brings many concerns. It is especially concerning because previous merger attempts by Sanford Health to come into Minnesota have failed due to their values and corporate behavior,” the union said.
SEIU also called on Ellison “to use all of his office’s powers within the law to provide oversight into this proposed merger and ensure the interests of Minnesota’s workers and patients are protected.”
Ellison’s office is asking the public to submit information through an online Community Input Form.
“As we have done and are currently doing with other healthcare transactions, we are conducting a thorough review of this potential acquisition to ensure it complies with the law and is in the public interest,” Ellison daid. “Proposed health care consolidation requires careful examination. As long as I am Attorney General, I will use the full range of regulatory tools to protect Minnesotans’ access to quality, affordable healthcare.”
The Minnesota Nurses Association released a statement saying it is “deeply concerned” by the merger announcement, warning it “could have far-reaching consequences for patients, healthcare workers, and the communities they serve.”
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BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – Here’s something North Dakotans can take pride in: North Dakota has the third-highest average IQ in the nation, tying with Vermont at 103.8. That is 3.5 points above the national average.
The state with the highest average is Massachusetts at 104.3 and the state with the lowest average is Mississippi at 94.2.
Ninety-four percent of North Dakotans graduate high school, making it the state with the sixth-highest graduation rate in the nation.
Copyright 2026 KFYR. All rights reserved.
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