Minnesota as Culturally Different from Rest of Midwest

[checkers]

There was a really good post in a similar thread to this back when I just lurked in the forum which argued that Minnesota wasn't really moving substantially to the right, but kept a fairly consistent pattern of having just enough of a strong, loyal democratic majority for it to remain blue, but by often small margins. Minnesota's highest Democratic vote relative to the nation occurred in Republican landslide years such as 1972 (where the Republican actually won), and 1984 (where Mondale's majority was tiny), while in Democratic landslides such as 1964, it tends much more to the average Democratic vote. This indicates a consistently strong Republican vote, but a consistently stronger Democratic one - and shows that the numbers of voters for each party hasn't changed all that much. The Republican presence in Minnesota is pretty clear - even during the period in which Minnesota was a DFL bastion, it elected a number of Republican governors, sent two Republicans to the senate for a considerable amount of time etc.

This is not to say that Minnesota hasn't moved right - I think it has, but that the degree of change is sometimes overstated. I also think that it is probably moving back left again from its rightward move in the 90s/early 2000s, though I'm not sure if this is a permanent trend or just a reaction to the fact that Minnesota is currently doing well economically (especially in comparison to Wisconsin), and continued backlash to the shutdown that happened with the Republicans controlled the legislature.