Parker Berman
For Republicans, it was the state that got away. Minnesota, as it is so often reported, has the longest single-party voting streak of any state, voting for the Democratic nominee in every election since 1976. It was the only state that did not back Reagan in 1984, and since then, Democratic nominees have won with comfortable margins in every election except for 2004 and 2016. Minnesota was a top state for Trump to flip in 2020 – he campaigned there several times (and arguably ceded ground in Michigan in the process), but the state swung leftward again and delivered Joe Biden a seven-point win.
Minnesota’s origins as a Democratic powerhouse are not due to a super-liberal populace or a high presence of minorities - most Minnesota Democrats are moderates (with congresswoman Ilhan Omar being a notable exception). Rather, a combination of party politics, now aided by demographic shifts, have kept the state in the Democratic column.
Technically, the Democratic party doesn’t exist in Minnesota. Anyone who has stumbled upon a politician from the state might note that they are marked as being members of the DFL. The DFL, officially Democratic-Farm-Labor party, formed in 1944 as a merger between the state Democratic Party and the liberal-populist state Farm Labor Party. Like much of the Midwest, populist politics play better in a region dependent on farming and mining. Farmers were also a heavily democratic voting block from the 1980s (mainly opposing Reagan) until swinging hard for Trump in 2016. It is also likely had a different Democrat ran in 2008 and 2012, that shift wouldn’t seem so sudden – Barack Obama, a fellow Midwesterner, has been noted for his ability to break through Republican advances in rural areas, particularly in 2008. Obama’s wins in Indiana, Iowa (the latter of which he held in 2012), both states now considered solidly Republican, should not be ignored when it comes to analyzing his victories in places like Minnesota.
Minnesota can be broken down into a few regions that explained its voting tradition. Minneapolis-St. Paul, like most cities of the past half-century voted Democratic, but it’s socially moderate-to-conservative suburbs were solid Republican, routinely sending GOP members to congress. That, like most suburban areas, has changed in the past five years. Not only have Democrats seen increasing margins in the MSP suburbs but in 2018, both of Minneapolis’s suburban congressional districts swapped GOP reps for Democrats Angie Craig and Dean Phillips, both of whom held their seats in 2020.
In the North of the state, where farmland transforms to woods, iron mining is key to the economy, Democrats have historically been able to pull massive margins in a highly unionized region. It was this region that ensured Mondale to hold the state in 1984 and made up for later Democrat’s losses in the Minneapolis suburbs. The Iron range however has been trending rightward – like many places in the Midwest, union power has been decreasing, and even where it remains, its members are less steadfast Democratic. While the region has not yet voted for a Republican president, it did elect Republican Pete Stauber in 2018.
The western part of the state was notable this cycle as having the last Democratic Congressman – Collin Peterson – to represent a majority-rural district. Democrats used to hold many rural districts in the midwest but having traded those seats for suburban ones they have dwindled down to just this one. Showing their weakness, even though Peterson had a 30 year tenure and a position of the later of the House Agriculture committee, he lost relection to Republican Michelle Fischbach. The south of the state is similar with the notable exception of Olmsted County, where Rochester and the Mayo Clinic are located. Olmsted has generally seen better Democratic performance than the rest of the state.
But election margins have shown signs of change – Bill Clinton won Minnesota in 1992 and 1996 with 12% and 7% margins respectively, but Al Gore in 2000 lost almost every rural county Clinton had carried. (Ralph Nader’s state-wide 5.2% likely contributed). Gore managed to carry the state, but did so with a 2% margin similar, to Hillary Clinton in 2016. John Kerry flipped back some rural counties in 2004 and won the state with a moderate 4%, still lower than either of Clinton’s victories. Obama’s blue wave in 2008 saw him win with 10.2% over John McCain. Obama lost fifteen counties he previously carried to Romney in 2012, but still won with a comfortable 7.7%.
However, the region is rapidly changing, and many of it’s residents were warm to Trump’s nationalistic and protectionist messages. Democrats have increasingly struggled with rural voters in the past twenty years and it is likely that Obama, being Midwestern as well as quite charismatic in a region where retail politics sells, likely masked an erosion of support for the DFL. Despite her win, Hillary Clinton carried just five counties outside of the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, four Iron-Range counties plus Olmsted county, where a high population of educated, white-collar workers helped her carry the county. Clinton ended up with just a 1.5% margin of victory in 2016, which put the state on the radar as one for Trump to flip in 2020.
Still, Clinton’s 1.5% may not have been the signal of competitiveness that the GOP hoped for. In 2016 Clinton vastly underperformed Obama, taking 46.44% compared to his 2012 52.65%. Trump, meanwhile, held the low-40s margins that Republicans have seen in the state since Reagan, and actually underperformed Romney by about .04% (though he still earned more raw votes). The narrow margin in 2016 instead came from a large share of third-party candidates taking votes – Libertarian Gary Johnson took nearly 4% and independent conservative Evan McMullin took nearly 2%. Third parties across the country took a greater vote share than usual in 2016 as the two candidates were both widely disliked. The difference with Biden is that while not the desired choice for many, he stood as inoffensive and a counterweight to Trump's polarization. Trump did manage to improve on his 2016 margin by .35% but was unprepared for a nearly 6% increase in the Biden vote. With the absence of significant third party support, Biden maintained a margin similar to his former boss and illustrated that the state may not be quite as competitive as some believed.
Going forward, it seems increasingly difficult to see Minnesota hotly contested. Republicans are continuing to make inroads, but they will struggle with the fact that the rural regions they are strong in do not have meaningful population growth, while suburbs continue to reject the GOP and vote increasingly blue. Minnesota’s competitiveness also comes down to practicality: the state has ten electoral votes that are expected to become nine with the 2020 census. Republicans may find it practical to cede Minnesota while taking up the defensive in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. It also means that Democrats will be able to rely less on the state, even as it falls in a counter trend to much of the Midwest.
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