If Clinton v. Sanders actually become competitive nationally, Sanders would crush it here of course for so many reasons.
One reason being that this is a caucus state. Clinton seriously underperformed compared to the polls in caucus states back in 2008.
If Clinton vs. Sanders became competitive, Sanders would likely have the edge in low turnout caucuses, like MN and WA. (Iowa's different because the turnout tends to be quite high by the standards of caucuses.)
I have taken part in two Minnesota presidential caucuses. They are caucuses in name only. They are basically just primaries where some people choose to hang around until the votes are counted. Clinton does poorly in Minnesota because Minnesota Democrats are very liberal, not because it's a caucus state.
I understand that the process isn't very caucus-like, but don't the MN caucuses tend to have turnout which is lower than most primary states, and more similar to what you see in caucus states? Clinton did underperform her pre-election polling in caucus states, including Minnesota, back in 2008, and I'm assuming that part of the reason is that turnout in caucus states is so low, making the polling less reliable.
Just look at the vote totals and you can see that it's not a caucus. In the 2008 Iowa caucus, Obama's winning total was 940. In the 2008 Minnesota "caucus", it was 142,109. The later is obviously based on individual votes not precincts or state delegates.
Minnesota does appear to have much lower turnout than some other states, Wisconsin for example. Wisconsin had about a million votes in the 2008 primary while Minnesota had only about 200,000.
I have no idea why that is.
I just have vivid memories of Hillary apologists in 2008 blaming her loss in Minnesota on it being a caucus and I was like "lol no".
214,000 voted in the MN caucus in 2008. An estimated 239,000 voted in the Iowa caucus and Iowa has about 3/5 the population of MN. My conclusion, MN is a low-turnout state with the caucus electorate dominated by the liberal base, hence why it went for Obama by such large margins in 2008 and why she will lose it in 2016.
