Are we living through the most difficult section of a U.S. History exam circa 2050? Was this election season written for a telenovela? Memes and tweets thrive in apparent chaos, and so, in this year’s presidential election season, the memes and tweets are thriving. All at once, things lifted into a state of uncertainty. Just as quickly, they seemed to settle.
Photo by Jacob Hamilton
Trace it back to June 27. President Joe Biden turned in a worrying debate performance against his challenger, former president Donald Trump. Concerns boiled over about the 81-year-old’s acuity. Election forecasters downgraded Biden’s chances; one reset Minnesota from “likely Democratic” to “leans Democratic.”
A few months before, Trump had spoken at a dinner for Minnesota Republican leaders in St. Paul. He falsely claimed he won the state in 2020. (At press time, he still falsely claims he won nationally, too.) Trump began seeking purchase in Minnesota during that election cycle four years ago. The state is “purple,” with greater Minnesota washed red, or Republican, while blue strongholds in the Twin Cities and Duluth account for Dems’ steady statewide pull. Actually, the state holds the longest Democratic voting streak in the history of the presidential race, outside Washington, D.C.—blue since 1976. “Just as I did before,” Trump said in St. Paul, “I’m going to rescue Minnesota from all that ravages you.”
Two weeks after the debate, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired an AR-pattern rifle at Trump during a rally in Pennsylvania, grazing Trump’s ear. When Trump walked onstage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee five days later, his ear bandage caught on as a symbol of Republican solidarity. The temperature seemed to rise. A few days later, Minneapolis-based political analyst Todd Rapp saw the electric response “solidifying the wayward Republican votes,” rather than “actually bringing along swing voters.”
A few days after Trump’s convention speech, Biden dropped out. Excitement coalesced around Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden had endorsed as nominee. The wheels seemed to click back onto the track. Harris went on to name Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz burst onto the national stage, a kind of “Midwest dad” character. (He had gone viral after pinning the gently ostracizing word “weird” to Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance.) Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is in the wings in Minnesota, should Harris and Walz win. At press time, a debate between Harris and Trump was set for Sept. 10. The country continues to barrel toward November.
And where has all this drama left Minnesota?
“Minnesota is the second-bluest Midwest state, trailing only Illinois,” political commentator Kyle Kondik wrote in a forecasting report for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics following the first debate. He cited growth in the Twin Cities and its suburbs as a counterbalance to Republican outstate regions. “But Trump almost won Minnesota in 2016.”
In 2020, Biden won Minnesota with a 7.12% margin. He had improved over Hillary Clinton’s 1.52% margin from 2016. Still, it was close. And now, with Harris instead of Biden, “I think it has become a much closer race to what 2020 looked like,” says Rapp. “Donald Trump, this year, has done a pretty good job of coalescing the support he had in 2020. He probably was also bringing over a few more Independents because of President Biden’s issues with age. But it’s not as if he was doing all that much better than 2020.” Biden’s age is no longer on the table, and the Democratic party “has unified around Harris as a candidate, as quickly as I’ve ever seen the Democratic party unify.” This is unprecedented territory, he adds. But Harris’ “starting point” appears to resemble 2020.
As interesting as the presidential race has become, there’s more on the ballot. At time of press, all house seats go up for election Aug. 13—and 10 or so are competitive, commentators say, enough to return control to Republicans. Then, in November, a special election could tip the Minnesota senate’s tight balance in Republican favor, as well.
Door-knocking politicians have felt for the pulse: How are Minnesotans voting this year, and why?
To hazard an answer, it would be strange to overlook the past two years. Narrowly in control of both legislative branches, plus the governorship, state Democrats have enjoyed the party’s first “trifecta” since 2014. After midterm victories in 2022, they turned the state into a national model of progressive policymaking. This year is the Dems’ to lose and the GOP’s to gain.
On both sides, campaigners have made a meal of that trifecta. To Republicans, the state’s recent blue period has been wild with unsustainable spending. They point to tax increases, the rapid dwindling of a $17.5 billion budget surplus, multiple audits exposing fraud in programs overseen by state agencies, and, in general, unchecked Democratic decision making.
Democrats have framed the past two years as a phase of good, impactful expenditure. The Democrats’ free-school-meals program, the paid Family and Medical Leave Act, and the affordable-housing investments—these and other policies, they say, slipped that multibillion-dollar surplus back into the pockets of Minnesotans.
The legislature’s electoral shakeout could recast the legacy of Democrats’ policymaking run. But local narratives, while eventful, fail to tell the whole story. At the polls, voters in Minnesota may actually be thinking about, and acting on, the same issues as voters countrywide.
“We really nationalized local politics,” says David Schultz, professor of political science at St. Paul’s Hamline University. He is describing a trend observed over the past two decades. “Increasingly, what’s happening at the national drives local races now.” And to a large extent, he says, the presidential nominees are the issues.
The Issues, Defined
At the end of last year, Rapp’s Minneapolis-based public relations firm, Rapp Strategies, released the results of a survey sussing out Minnesotans’ concerns ahead of this year’s cycle.
“If you’re going to choose one word that I think defines what people are talking about,” says Rapp, “and particularly where their fears are, the word is ‘security.’” It applies to the economy, health care access, international issues, the country’s borders, and democracy itself.
The statewide survey, conducted last December through the Morris Leatherman research firm, polled a random sample of 800 adults in Minnesota. It presented them with a dozen issues. “There are some limitations to the research,” Rapp says. “There probably were six or eight other issues that we couldn’t put there that might have begun to poke their head up.” (At press time, results of a second survey were set for release at some point in the summer.)
Both parties, plus Independents, ended up with their own top-five list of “extremely serious” concerns. For Democrats, those concerns were violent crime, racial equity, mental health crisis, the cost of goods, and the quality of K-12 education. (“Racial equity” and “mental health crisis,” Rapp says, speak to the party’s younger and more diverse voters.)
By early summer, Rapp realized he would adjust these results. Anxieties about violent crime appear to have cooled, for instance—although the topic has staying power in the media. “There’s perception of a bad crime problem within the core of the Twin Cities area, when, in fact, we probably have peaked and passed that peak,” he says, “and some of the intervention strategies have begun to take effect.”
There are some additions he would make, too. Gaza will have risen up the ranks as a more serious concern for Democrats. Unlike the strife in Ukraine, it has not inspired unanimity. “It’s probably the No. 1 turnout challenge for Democrats in Minnesota,” Rapp says. In fact, 11 “uncommitted” delegates are set to attend the Democratic National Convention in August. These delegates have declared “no preference,” to protest the Biden administration’s support for Israel in its latest war with Hamas. Harris, while echoing Biden’s outlook on Gaza, has been seen as harder on Israel’s military operation.
Rapp would add reproductive rights—including access to birth control and in vitro fertilization, as well as abortion care. (The survey had included “abortion” as a concern.) The Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization remains influential, determining that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. The 2022 decision, by Trump’s more-conservative court, likely secured local Democrats their midterm wins two years ago—and the case is likely to continue mobilizing voters.
Then, there’s the issue of democracy—January 6 is still on Democrats’ minds. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, at the state’s Democratic convention in Duluth, reportedly warned about Trump taking a “wrecking ball to the foundations of democracy and the rule of law.” Then, there’s Project 2025, a “presidential transition” agenda organized by the Heritage Foundation conservative think tank. Critics have described the extreme proposals it lays out as autocratic—such as abolishing the Department of Education, rescinding protections for LGBTQ+ folks, choking out support for abortions, and replacing civil servants with political appointees.
Courtesy of New York Times
“My guess is that Project 2025 is going to reinforce some of the feelings about Donald Trump in two ways,” Rapp says. First, it puts agenda to paper, heightening awareness. Second, Trump has insisted he does not know who is behind Project 2025, although he spoke well of the plan in 2022, and reports emerged in July that many Trump allies are involved. Trump’s denial may “chip away” at trust—“particularly for Independents,” Rapp says.
On the other side, state Republicans singled out “election integrity” in a proposed platform this year, advertising a familiar Republican talking point and a perceived risk to democracy, despite minimal evidence suggesting voter fraud has benefited Democrats, according to the nonprofit Brookings Institution.
At the Democratic convention in Duluth, copper-nickel mining came up, as well—a local issue among these national topics. Considered potentially harmful to the environment, such mining is perhaps not as hot-button of a concern, though relevant to the Iron Range. “I suspect we’re looking at [5% or 10%] of the electorate that cares about [copper-nickel mining] statewide,” Schultz says. The environment is still critical, though, says Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman. Smoggy Minnesota skies from Canadian wildfires made climate change a hot topic two years ago.
As for Republicans’ “top five”? Rapp’s survey results circle the economy. The national debt, interest rates, the cost of goods, inflation, and violent crime topped the GOP’s list of “extremely serious” concerns.
It’s a bread-and-butter strategy for local officials. “Republicans were looking at a more than 30% increase in the state budget,” Rapp says. “What it really comes back to is whether or not people, as they go into this election, are feeling personally economically secure.”
A January analysis by CBS News found that, even with an expansive GDP, growing wages, and low unemployment, there are reasons Americans have rated the economy poorly—namely, unaffordable housing, higher everyday costs, and credit card debt.
But talking points have shifted since late last year, when the survey went out. To the Republicans’ list, Rapp would add immigration. Fueled by the national party, this topic has surged back to the fore. The number of unauthorized immigrants from countries besides Mexico grew rapidly between 2019 and 2022, according to the Pew Research Center, from 5.8 million to 6.9 million. In February, polling giant Gallup reported immigration had become “the single most important problem” for the first time since 2019, with 28% of Americans naming immigration as the country’s biggest issue—up from 20% the month before.
Donna Bergstrom, deputy chair of the Minnesota Republicans, identifies a local angle for immigration: “People are concerned that we’re going to start seeing the same things on the northern border that we’re seeing on the southern border,” she says, citing reports from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which noted a 73% increase in northern border encounters last year (up to 189,000), over 2022.
To winnow down these issues, there are none more critical to elections than two, according to Schultz: the economy and reproductive rights.
It’s a familiar battleground. Democrats will leverage the wedge issue of reproductive rights against Republicans. At stake is a group of much-discussed swing voters: college-educated suburban women. (Rapp says they account for the appearance of “abortion” among Independents’ “extremely serious” concerns, alongside inflation, the national debt, the cost of goods, and violent crime.)
Republicans will stress the economy. “Obviously, national issues rise to the top,” Minnesota House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth says. “But I think Minnesotans are very, very focused on the fact that everything, when they go to the grocery store, is more expensive”—with food prices having risen 25% from 2019 to 2023, per the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Minnesota Democratic initiatives, like a retail delivery fee launched in July, Demuth says, intensify the crunch. Democrats have flagged the economy, too, and counter that government spending relieves the crunch. “I don’t think that the tax cuts for wealthy folks and corporations is something that Minnesotans really want,” Hortman says.
Nationalized
Noticeably, national issues do rise to the top, as Demuth puts it. Analyses of nationwide voter concerns this year resemble Rapp’s lists. It’s about the economy, and immigration, and the state of democracy, and reproductive rights. Seemingly, the national is the local.
“We’ve typically gone through periods of one election, or maybe two in a row, that are this nationalized,” Rapp says. But he can’t recall a recent era when politics have remained nationalized for so long—almost a decade now. “I’m trying to think back to the 1970s, and it just wasn’t.”
What can make nationalization frustrating is that, in the face of these national problems, states can often, actually, do little. “Even though abortion is a state issue—at least theoretically, after the Dobbs decision—depending on what happens at the presidential and congressional elections, there could be federal legislation that restricts reproductive rights,” Schultz says.
Local representatives barely clock in on the world stage, regarding another big national issue, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Nonetheless, locals have taken action: Protesters gathered outside Klobuchar’s office in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting Congress, for example.) Grocery prices, meanwhile, are outside local elected officials’ control, beyond some trust-busting from the attorney general, Schultz says (plus financial relief-valve measures pushed by local legislators).
Some attribute nationalization to the decline of local journalism. Larry Jacobs, political science professor at the University of Minnesota, describes an area at the Capitol, in St. Paul, set aside for journalists. “When I first started going there, two or three decades ago, it was packed with folks who were covering the Capitol for TV and radio and print in the Twin Cities and all over the state,” he says. “I was recently there, and it’s almost abandoned.”
Without as much local coverage, voters may not know local issues well. Confounded by names on local ballots, they turn to national topics as shortcuts. “To say ‘Obamacare’ … or ‘Donald Trump’ is to cue a set of meaningful associations with the national parties,” wrote political scientist Daniel J. Hopkins in a 2018 article on nationalization. “Contemporary state and local politics are presumed to be devoid of such symbols.”
House Majority Leader Hortman has faced off, in person, against voters’ fixation on Washington, D.C. She recalls door-knocking in 2010, when the presidential midterms felt omnipresent. Some folks she met would gladly have voted for Hortman, they told her—except they needed to send then-president Barack Obama a message. Later, in 2016, she says, “I think people thought Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were both pretty unappealing candidates,” and “their feelings about those candidates bled over into their feelings about local-level people.”
At the same time, local officials tend to enjoy greater good will. “Trust in government has all but disappeared on the federal level,” Rapp says. (“Government” was the most consistently cited No. 1 problem in the country last year, according to Gallup.) “There’s still a level of trust and satisfaction with local governments.” People are generally (but not always) satisfied with work done by school boards, city councils, and county commissions, he says, citing another Rapp survey.
For the big races this year, Rapp says predictions are fairly useless. “Generally speaking, elections are about what’s ahead of us, not what’s behind us.”
Illustration by Adobe/Gstudio
Before Biden dropped out, Hortman had picked up on some insights while door-knocking. She began to register an unfamiliar vibe. Folks were telling her they may not vote on the national ticket, unhappy with both Trump and Biden. They asked her about local representatives. “‘What about state government? How can that affect my life?’” she recalls them saying.
But if that’s what some are willing to tell local politicians at their doorsteps, experts still spotlight the two national heavyweights. “A term that we’ve learned this year is a phrase called ‘double haters,’” Schultz says. These are people who not only loathed Biden; they also couldn’t stand Trump. “About 20% … of the voting public equally hated Trump and Biden. And what they were going to do was a good question. Are they going to hold their nose? Vote for the lesser of two evils? Are they going to vote third-party? Or were they going to just opt out and not vote?”
With Biden out and Harris in, he says, everyone’s wondering, “What do the double haters do?”
Race to the Finish
On Nov. 5, Minnesotans will go to the polls, with a primary Aug. 13 and early voting (by mail or in person) starting Sept. 20. Here’s the ballot big picture for Minnesota:
U.S. President
Former president Donald Trump glossed over Minnesota in the lead-up to the 2016 election, campaigned harder for the state’s 10 electoral votes in 2020, and now, in his third bid for the presidency, is picking up where he left off. He and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, led a campaign rally in St. Cloud late July. Two months earlier, Trump had spoken at a St. Paul dinner for state Republican leaders.
President Joe Biden dropped out of the race late July, and several state Democratic leaders followed Biden in endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive nominee at press time. At a rally in Pennsylvania, Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris praised Gov. Tim Walz, the newly minted Democratic vice presidential nominee, as the type of leader who can make people feel they belong.
Harris took the lead over Trump in the first Minnesota poll, released by KSTP and conducted by SurveyUSA starting a few days after Biden left the race: 50% over 40%. In late June, following Biden’s troubling first debate performance, Biden had led Trump in the same poll, at 47% over 41%.
“Minnesota, I don’t believe, is going to decide who becomes president, right?” says Todd Rapp, political analyst and president and CEO of Minneapolis-based Rapp Strategies. “That really hasn’t changed.” He points to Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as the key battleground states. The issue worrying Minnesota Democrats more than any other, he adds, has been turnout. With Biden gone, “I don’t think turnout is going to be a factor anymore.”
Senate and House Race
All eight of the state’s U.S. House seats and numerous state legislative positions are also on the November ballot.
