patrick.net

In the fabled “blue wall” — the collection of historically Democratic states that pundits (wrongly) assumed gave Hillary Clinton an Electoral College advantage in 2016 — Minnesota is the cornerstone. The Democratic candidate has won Minnesota in 11 straight presidential elections, the longest active streak in the country. What’s more, no Republican has won any statewide election in Minnesota since 2006 — not for Senate, not for governor, not even for state auditor.

It’s tempting to conclude from this that Minnesota is a safe Democratic state. But Minnesota is much more evenly divided than that record suggests: For example, it came within a couple percentage points of voting for now-President Trump in 2016. And as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — which voted Democratic in every presidential election from 1992 to 2012 — showed in 2016, streaks are meant to be broken.1

Most ominously for Democrats, there is evidence that Minnesota is becoming redder over time, with 2016 being a particular inflection point. In 1984, the state was 18.2 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. But in 2016, for the first time since 1952, Minnesota voted more Republican than the rest of the U.S.