(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
Sixth in a series on swing states
For Republicans, Minnesota has long been the one that got away. Ronald Reagan came 3,761 votes away from carrying it in 1984, with Walter Mondale’s hometown advantage probably costing him a 50-state sweep. Sixteen years later, with Ralph Nader peeling votes away from Al Gore, George W. Bush came within three points of winning the state.
Republicans didn’t get so close again until 2016, when Donald Trump lost Minnesota by 44,593 votes. And it has rankled Trump ever since. “We came this close from winning this,” Trump said during a 2018 visit to Duluth, a frustrated take he’d deliver again and again, arguing that a little more campaigning would have flipped the state. “One more speech — oh, one more speech.”
Trump’s party has acted on that analysis, investing the same sort of ground game and ad resources in Minnesota that it has in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That’s a shift from 2016, when both parties were surprised by what Trump’s ad hoc effort almost pulled off. But Democrats have engaged more seriously, too, coaxing Joe Biden into a visit this week, when early voting begins.
Minn.’s swing from 2012 to 2016
Clinton added votes in the Twin Cities, enough to stave off Trump’s gains everywhere else.
Dem. won by
200K votes
GOP won
by 200K
Twin Cities
Iron Range
Twin Suburbs
Greater Minn.
Statewide 2016 margin
In 2018, Democrats improved enough in the Iron Range and the Twin Burbs that a GOP win was impossible.
How Minnesota swung from 2012 to 2016
Clinton added votes in the Twin Cities, enough to stave off Trump’s gains in the rest of the state.
Dem. won by
200K votes
GOP won
by 200K
Twin Cities
Iron Range
2016
margin
Twin Suburbs
Greater Minn.
Statewide 2016 margin
In 2018, Democrats improved enough in the Iron Range and the Twin Burbs that a GOP win was impossible.
How Minnesota swung from 2012 to 2016
Clinton added votes in the Twin Cities, enough to stave off Trump’s gains in the rest of the state.
Dem. won by
200K votes
GOP won
by 200K
Twin Cities
Iron Range
2016
margin
2012
margin
Twin Suburbs
Greater Minn.
Statewide 2016 margin
In 2018, Democrats improved enough in the Iron Range and the Twin Burbs that a GOP win was impossible.
No poll has found Trump ahead in Minnesota, but polling underestimated his 2016 support, and Republicans contend he has held or gained ground since then. As in the rest of the Midwest, Trump struggled in cities but won vast numbers of rural White voters — and in Minnesota, that cut right through the coalition that had elected Democrats for decades. Rural towns that had elected only Democratic mayors or legislators swung to Trump, and even though Democrats swept 2018’s statewide races, some of those voters stayed swung.
“The Democrats have left them behind,” said Jennifer Carnahan, the chair of Minnesota’s GOP. “They call themselves the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but they’ve completely lost the farmers and members of labor unions. They’re against mining. They’re against job creation. They’re against a pipeline up in northeastern Minnesota on the Iron Range. They don’t stand with those folks anymore.”
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Democrats have lost ground with some of their traditional Minnesota voters, but the 2018 election revealed the limits of the GOP’s gains. Trump had won just 45 percent of the vote in 2016 and got close to Clinton in part because 9 percent of voters backed a third-party candidate. (Just two other states saw a higher percentage of third-party votes, Alaska and New Mexico.) In 2018, no Republican running statewide got more than 45 percent of the vote, and Democrats improved their numbers in the Iron Range and Southeast Minnesota, carrying outer suburbs of the Twin Cities at levels that made a Republican win impossible.
This map divides Minnesota into five political “states.” Just one, the Twin Cities, got more Democratic in 2016. Another, the suburbs and exurbs of those cities, changed little between 2012 and 2016 but swung left in 2018. Two regions flipped from Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 — the counties from the Iron Range over to Duluth and Lake Superior, and a corner of Southeast Minnesota. And the rest of the state, the Greater Minnesota that stretches from Iowa to Canada, moved dramatically toward the GOP.
This is the sixth in a series breaking down the key swing states of 2020, showing how electoral trends played out over the past few years and where the shift in votes really mattered.
Twin Cities
Compared with the state overall,the voting population here …
Has a higher share of people living in cities than average.
Has more non-White residents than average.
Has more college-educated residents than average.
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
Minneapolis saved Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Minnesota. The biggest and bluest city in the state, it had been getting more Democratic for years, but Keith Ellison — then the city’s congressman, now the state’s attorney general — put special emphasis on turning out the vote. The result, a 148,892-vote landslide in Minneapolis, was the biggest for any Democratic candidate ever, and it put Clinton over the top statewide.
Minneapolis and St. Paul now make up the core of the Democratic vote, and their surrounding counties, Hennepin and Ramsey, pad the total. Clinton carried every town in Ramsey and flipped several Hennepin towns that Obama had lost; two years later, places like Eden Prairie were crucial to the successful Democratic effort to flip the House. When the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party went all-in this year to support Rep. Ilhan Omar in her August primary, it was explicitly because of her ability to drive turnout in the city.
2016 vote total
Donald Trump
262,771
Hillary Clinton
606,881
2016 vote totals
Donald Trump: 262,771
Hillary Clinton: 606,881
Counties included: Hennepin, Ramsey
Twin Burbs
Compared with the state overall,the voting population here …
Has a higher share of people living in cities than average.
Has fewer non-White residents than average.
Has more college-educated residents than average.
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
The exurbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul did not see the same vote shifts as the rest of the state. From 2012 to 2016, the GOP margin in the region rose by just 5,415 votes, and a lot of that had to do with the vote for third-party candidates — that number grew by 47,880, as the raw Republican vote fell by 16,926. Minnesota was one of 11 states where independent conservative Evan McMullin made the ballot that year, and he got 2 percent of the vote here while the Libertarian candidate cleared 4 percent. Republicans view those voters as gettable for Trump. Democrats aren’t convinced.
“These have been Republican areas for years, but they’ve trended Democratic in recent cycles,” DFL chair Ken Martin said. “You’ve got Fortune 500 executives, in wealthy neighborhoods, who are not comfortable with Trump.”
Democrats, who are trying to flip the GOP-controlled state senate this cycle, are hoping to build on some of their exurban gains from the midterms. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz carried three of the region’s five counties; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whose appeal to Republicans was central to her presidential campaign, carried them all. With Klobuchar’s endorsement, Biden demolished the competition here in the 2020 primary, which Democrats saw as a clue that he could win some Republicans who’ve grown uncomfortable with the party in the Trump era.
2016 vote total
Donald Trump
326,644
Hillary Clinton
303,094
2016 vote totals
Donald Trump: 326,644
Hillary Clinton: 303,094
Counties included: Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Scott, Washington
Iron Range
Compared with the state overall,the voting population here …
Has a lower share of people living in cities than average.
Has fewer non-White residents than average.
Has fewer college-educated residents than average.
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
For decades, the small mining towns of northeastern Minnesota were strongholds of unionized, Democratic votes — vastly outvoted by the Twin Cities but crucial for the party’s statewide win margin and usually represented by the party in Congress. That began to change in 2010, and the floor fell out in 2016, when Trump swept the Iron Range. Republicans picked up the region’s House seat in 2018, and polling has found Biden, who has embraced more rigorous environmental standards than he did when he ran for vice president, losing the Iron Range even when he leads statewide.
There may be more votes for Republicans to pick up here, even in the counties east of the range that stayed blue in 2016. Duluth, which casts almost a quarter of the region’s total vote, broke for the Democratic ticket by 37 points in 2012, then by just 29 points in 2016. The falloff for Democrats in smaller cities was dramatic, and the Republican National Convention highlighted a number of Minnesotans who advanced the party’s case: The pro-green-energy, pro-abortion-rights, pro-gun-control version of the Democratic Party didn’t represent northeastern Minnesota.
2016 vote total
Donald Trump
101,186
Hillary Clinton
96,679
2016 vote totals
Donald Trump: 101,186
Hillary Clinton: 96,679
Counties included: Aitkin, Carlton, Cook, Crow Wing, Itasca, Koochiching, Lake, St. Louis
Southeast
Compared with the state overall,the voting population here …
Has a lower share of people living in cities than average.
Has fewer non-White residents than average.
Has fewer college-educated residents than average.
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
The “driftless area” that covers parts of Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota swung hard toward Republicans in 2016. Unlike other rural areas, Democrats in 2018 were able to win much of it back; in Minnesota that was thanks, in part, to gubernatorial candidate Tim Walz winning the 1st Congressional District, which covers the region. Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn flipped that district by one point, but Trump had won it by 15.
What changed? Clinton lost eight counties that had backed Obama twice and won only around the city of Rochester, where the Mayo Clinic has fostered a population of college-educated White voters. The midterm’s Democrats won many of those people back, as voters in the suburbs of cities like Mankato and Winona broke against Republicans. One reason for their resilience: The region has welcomed thousands of refugees, for decades, and the population of some smaller cities here has been growing as more rural parts of the state have shrunk.
Compared with the state overall,the voting population here …
Has a lower share of people living in cities than average.
Has fewer non-White residents than average.
Has fewer college-educated residents than average.
(Lauren Tierney/The Washington Post) ([object Object])
For a little while on election night 2016, some Democrats started to think that Minnesota was lost. Greater Minnesota, a largely rural region bigger than many states, was the reason. Even in 1984, Democrats had held on to towns like Benson and Red Lake, mitigating the GOP’s rural strength. Trump carried every single county in the region, transforming the party’s win margin of nearly 43,000 votes in 2012 to more than 208,000 votes in 2016.
The GOP’s gains in much of the region look secure now; Democrats have tried to drum up rural outrage over Trump’s tariff policies, while Republicans have touted the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement as proof that Trump will act where Democrats talked. (Rep. Collin C. Peterson, one of the GOP’s top targets this cycle, chairs the House Agriculture Committee and backed the trade deal after Democratic revisions.) Trump’s visit to Bemidji this week will take him to one of the places where the flip was especially dramatic — Obama beat Mitt Romney there by 1,079 votes, while Trump beat Clinton there by 119. Margins like that, from small towns to small cities, let Trump close the statewide vote gap — but not overcome it.
2016 vote total
Donald Trump
433,639
Hillary Clinton
212,468
2016 vote totals
Donald Trump: 433,639
Hillary Clinton: 212,468
Counties included: Becker, Beltrami, Benton, Big Stone, Cass, Chippewa, Chisago, Clay, Clearwater, Cottonwood, Douglas, Grant, Hubbard, Isanti, Jackson, Kanabec, Kandiyohi, Kittson, Lac qui Parle, Lake of the Woods, Lincoln, Lyon, Mahnomen, Marshall, McLeod, Meeker, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Murray, Nobles, Norman, Otter Tail, Pennington, Pine, Pipestone, Polk, Pope, Red Lake, Redwood, Renville, Rock, Roseau, Sherburne, Stearns, Stevens, Swift, Todd, Traverse, Wadena, Wilkin, Wright, Yellow Medicine
New Brunswick voters have elected a Liberal majority government, tossing out the incumbent Progressive Conservatives after six years in power and handing the reins to the first woman ever to lead the province. Liberal Leader Susan Holt spent much of the campaign rolling out proposed fixes for a health-care system racked by a doctor shortage, overcrowded emergency rooms and long wait-times. She promised to open 30 community health clinics across the province by 2028. (Oct. 22, 2024)
Susan Holt has made history in New Brunswick by becoming the first woman to serve as the leader of the province’s Liberal Party, a significant milestone in the province’s political landscape. Holt’s leadership victory signals a new era of representation, gender equality, and change in the region, which has long been dominated by male politicians.
Holt’s journey to the top has been one of perseverance and dedication. Before entering politics, she built a distinguished career in the private sector, where she held numerous leadership positions. Her experience in business development and public policy has equipped her with the skills needed to navigate the complex world of politics.
In a province where women have historically been underrepresented in politics, Holt’s election represents a watershed moment. Women’s involvement in leadership roles has been steadily increasing nationwide, but New Brunswick, like many parts of Canada, has seen slower progress in achieving gender parity. Holt’s rise to the top of the Liberal Party not only shatters a glass ceiling but also serves as an inspiration for future generations of women aiming for political leadership.
As the leader of the New Brunswick Liberal Party, Holt has laid out a vision of inclusivity and progress. Her policies focus on economic development, healthcare reform, environmental sustainability, and addressing social issues that have plagued the province. She has also emphasized the importance of transparent governance and creating opportunities for underrepresented communities, making her platform both modern and forward-thinking.
Holt’s leadership arrives at a time when many voters are calling for change, especially in the face of challenges like economic uncertainty and the need for healthcare improvements. She aims to bring fresh ideas to tackle these issues while ensuring that all citizens, regardless of their background, have a voice in government decisions.
Susan Holt joins the ranks of other trailblazing women across Canada who have led provincial parties and governments. Women like former Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne have paved the way, and now Holt is contributing to this growing legacy of female political leadership in Canada.
Her achievement highlights not only the growing number of women entering politics but also the demand for leaders who can bring diverse perspectives to the table. In a field often dominated by entrenched traditions, Holt’s election is a step toward a more inclusive and representative political landscape in New Brunswick.
Holt’s leadership signals a broader shift in Canadian politics, where more women and diverse voices are gaining prominence. For young women across the country, her rise serves as a powerful reminder that leadership roles are within reach, even in traditionally male-dominated spheres.
With her election, Susan Holt has proven that perseverance, skill, and a vision for change can break even the toughest barriers. Her leadership will not only reshape New Brunswick’s political future but also inspire others across Canada to pursue leadership positions and continue to challenge the status quo.
NDP Leader Carla Beck has two planned campaign events today, starting the day with an availability in Moose Jaw and then later this evening attending an event in the capital with the Regina Medical Staff Association.
Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe, meanwhile, will speak in Prince Albert at the start of Voting Week in the province.
Saskatchewan residents can vote for five days starting today in the lead-up to next week’s provincial election, although polls won’t be open Sunday.
The NDP and the Saskatchewan Party are urging voters to cast their ballots early.
Voters can find their polling stations on their information cards or by visiting the Elections Saskatchewan website.
Chief electoral officer Michael Boda says there are about 810,000 registered voters in Saskatchewan.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 22, 2024.
