Something about the state seems to fit much better with the emerging Democratic coalition than its neighbors. Any idea what is going on here and why there has been so little midterm backlash there?
Minnesota's economy has done much much better than the rest of the midwest as a whole, so despite minnesota having negative approval ratings of obama just like 43 states are. The statewide democratic party got credit for a much better recovery than most of the midwest.
http://www.cnn.com/election/2014/results/state/MN/governorLook at exit polls and quite a rarity where 67% of residents rated economic conditions in the state as good, this allowed Mark Dayton and Al franken to win by a larger margin than their initial elections years back which were decided on margins of >0.20%
Also the state has a lot of Scandinavian americans in the iron triangle and parts of minnesota, theres a weird correlation in midwest where areas of Scandinavian american ancestry lean democrat and german americans lean republican. And the deciding factor being a high minority turnout that puts democrats to the finish line or a low one which gives republicans a breathe of air.
Green is Scandinavian ancestry
http://www.geocurrents.info/geopolitics/elections/swedish-americans-vote-democrats-national-origins-voting-behavior-united-statesScandinavian descents voting more democrat might not seem unusual given the more social democratic policies in their homeland. While Germany has been led by a centre-right ordoliberal party the CDU as their natural governing party since WW2.
