Why do people underestimate Minnesota's Democratic political lean

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

Actual Margin (left) relative to nation (right)
MN 1960: 1.43+D --> 1.27+D
MN 1964: 27.76+D --> 5.18+D
MN 1968: 12.53+D --> 13.23+D
MN 1972: 5.51+R --> 17.64+D
MN 1976: 12.87+D --> 10.81+D
MN 1980: 3.94+D --> 13.68+D
MN 1984: 0.18+D --> 18.40+D
MN 1988: 7.02+D --> 14.75+D
MN 1992: 11.63+D --> 6.07+D
MN 1996: 16.14+D --> 7.62+D
MN 2000: 2.40+D --> 1.88+D (Strong showing for Nader most likely explains this anomalous result)
MN 2004: 3.48+D --> 5.94+D
MN 2008: 10.24+D --> 2.97+D
MN 2012: 7.69+D --> 3.83+D
MN 2016: 1.52+D --> 0.58+R

Minnesota has been becoming increasingly marginal since the 80s, Trump's unprecedented strong performance there fits in with this trend and his ability to make inroads into northern rural areas. SOME rural areas are declining in population, but this decline isn't happening fast enough to counteract the swing towards the Republicans. Turnout wasn't significantly different from 2012 and to say the 1.7 point decrease were 100% Democrat voters is dubious.
Another thing to make note of is that Minnesota's 18-24 bracket (like neighbouring Wisconsin) voted 48-43 Trump in 2016 according to CNN exit polls, whilst the 65+ bracket still favours Dems, so the age trends aren't looking like they'll hurt Republicans short term: https://edition.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls/minnesota/president

OP reeks of partisanship.

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

Trump didn't have a strong showing in Minnesota. Clinton had a weak one. Trump barely got 2,000 votes more than Romney and actually won a lower share of the votes than Romney in 2012. It's really Clinton who completly crattered, while Johnson more than doubled his showing.

Its dubious to assume that most people who supported third parties would of gone for Clinton, especially in a state where McMullin got nearly 2% of the vote. Johnson/Stein/McMullin voters may have broke for Hillary, they may have broke for Trump, they may have mostly stayed home. My money is on the 3rd option.

Seems like an unrealible exit poll considering exit polls showed Walz winning 18-24 with 70 percent of the vote and the middle age and older folks to be more republican which seems accurate. The rural areas skew older as well and most young folks in the metro are certainally not republicans from what I can see. There is No way Young people shifted from 43 percent Clinton to 70 percent walz. Clinton probabaly got like 60-65 percent of 18-24 vote.

I found it surprising but CNN's exit polls did exclude percentages deemed too small to be accurate and neighbouring Wisconsin had similar results. I'm not a fan of equating gubernatorial and congressional results with presidential results because of the different political environment, emphasis on issues, candidates, etc. but that swing is interesting. Perhaps CNN's 2016 exit polling was extremely off for WI and MN, perhaps there are some dynamics to Gen-Z we are unfamiliar with or perhaps this is a case of downballot voting differentiation, or a combination of these factors. I can't seem to find other news outlets which did a state breakdown of 2016 results so I guess I'm waiting until 2020 to verify this.

Yawn. I was not trying to be a partisan hack.

Having read some of the justifications about MN trending R, I now see why people consider MN an R-trending purple state. It is really politically similar to neighboring WI, with a slightly more D tilt, so don't accuse me of partisanship for asking a question.

Also, aren't you being a partisan hack by reading too much into exit polls? As someone else pointed out, Walz won the 18-24 age group by 70%, which is roughly in line with many other exit polls and thus is more reliable.

The question seemed like a rhetorical vent and I found the comparison to Oregon particularly silly, but if you're able to understand why people view Minnesota as presidentially competitive, then perhaps I misjudged...

I'm not partisan and I'm not even American. Unfortunately I've found no other state breakdowns of the 2016 election to compare it with and I would of just dismissed it if only MN's polling showed this anomaly but WI's polling shows it as well, and its not just an against the trend swing in both states either, you see a Democratic peak in the 30-39 bracket then some increase in Republican support in 25-29 then 18-24 in the red for both states, so it didn't seem completely absurd. Regarding Walz's results I talk about that in my response to The3rdParty^^^