MN-GOV: Walz +11- Walz +17

[ElectionsGuy]

Calling Minnesota Safe D a year after Democrats just lost Virginia because of one poll is... naive, to put it mildly.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Calling Minnesota Safe D a year after Democrats just lost Virginia because of one poll is... naive, to put it mildly.

Lol see gonna have higher turnout than 2021 it's not always about VA and Kaine is on the ballot in 24 so Rs aren't winning VA again

[politicallefty]

It's fairly absurd how well Democratic Governors are holding up in polling relative to the national climate. Maybe that's because it will end up being irrelevant as we've seen before...but the fact that people like Walz - along with Governors like JBE, Beshear and Kelly - aren't just above water but have absolute majority approvals is surely not in line with the national climate. If there does remain some semblance of a divide between national climate and gubernatorial support in 2022, then I could see somebody like Walz (a Democratic incumbent in a predominantly-Democratic state) winning by 10 points even if the GCB for MN is in the low single digits.

It remains to be seen as to what happens this year, but Minnesota really hasn't experienced the waves like many other states have during the past few midterms. In recent years, Republicans seem to have a fairly firm ceiling of no more than 47%. They haven't hit that number for the House in this century. Their last gubernatorial candidate to reach that number was back in 1994. For the Senate, it was Norm Coleman in 2002 (and Rod Grams before that, in 1994). At the presidential level post-1972 (Nixon being the last Republican to win MN at the presidential level), only Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 2004 have crossed 46%. The Democratic vote has largely been the bigger variable over the years, mostly due to higher than average third party votes.

I have to wonder if part of Minnesota's quirkiness is due to having one of the most politically-engaged electorate of any state. Voter turnout (VEP) in 2020 was 80% and over 64% in the 2018 midterms.

If there's one non-safe state that could easily defy national trends, it's Minnesota. Democrats failed to oust Pawlenty in 2006 and Republicans failed to knock out Dayton in 2014. Republicans did come close in the open race in 2010, but that race also had a third party candidate in double-digits. Even in a very bad environment, it would be the shocker of the night for me if Walz goes down.

[Adam Griffin]

It's fairly absurd how well Democratic Governors are holding up in polling relative to the national climate. Maybe that's because it will end up being irrelevant as we've seen before...but the fact that people like Walz - along with Governors like JBE, Beshear and Kelly - aren't just above water but have absolute majority approvals is surely not in line with the national climate. If there does remain some semblance of a divide between national climate and gubernatorial support in 2022, then I could see somebody like Walz (a Democratic incumbent in a predominantly-Democratic state) winning by 10 points even if the GCB for MN is in the low single digits.

It remains to be seen as to what happens this year, but Minnesota really hasn't experienced the waves like many other states have during the past few midterms. In recent years, Republicans seem to have a fairly firm ceiling of no more than 47%. They haven't hit that number for the House in this century. Their last gubernatorial candidate to reach that number was back in 1994. For the Senate, it was Norm Coleman in 2002 (and Rod Grams before that, in 1994). At the presidential level post-1972 (Nixon being the last Republican to win MN at the presidential level), only Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 2004 have crossed 46%. The Democratic vote has largely been the bigger variable over the years, mostly due to higher than average third party votes.

I have to wonder if part of Minnesota's quirkiness is due to having one of the most politically-engaged electorate of any state. Voter turnout (VEP) in 2020 was 80% and over 64% in the 2018 midterms.

If there's one non-safe state that could easily defy national trends, it's Minnesota. Democrats failed to oust Pawlenty in 2006 and Republicans failed to knock out Dayton in 2014. Republicans did come close in the open race in 2010, but that race also had a third party candidate in double-digits. Even in a very bad environment, it would be the shocker of the night for me if Walz goes down.

While I agree with a lot of this, let me play Devil's Advocate.

Counterpoints:

1) The only 2 static House districts in 2018 nationally that flipped D-to-R were in Minnesota.

2) It's an 85% white electorate that's disproportionately older and working-class.

3) It's quite possible that Trump would have won MN in 2016 had third-party preferencing been lower.

4) Over the past 5 years, it's been readily proven that high turnout is no longer inherently 100% good for Democrats: a 100m+ electorate in 2010 or 2014 likely would have seen Republicans routed by >10 points. Many would have expected the same in a hypothetical future 2020 presidential with ~160m voters.

5) While the strength of Democrats in the state has been held together almost exclusively by the remarkable local influencing power of the DFL, polarization, generational turnover and a lack of interest in day-to-day civic participation means people are less likely to cross party lines for any contest whatsoever.

[politicallefty]

While I agree with a lot of this, let me play Devil's Advocate.

Counterpoints:

1) The only 2 static House districts in 2018 nationally that flipped D-to-R were in Minnesota.

2) It's an 85% white electorate that's disproportionately older and working-class.

3) It's quite possible that Trump would have won MN in 2016 had third-party preferencing been lower.

4) Over the past 5 years, it's been readily proven that high turnout is no longer inherently 100% good for Democrats: a 100m+ electorate in 2010 or 2014 likely would have seen Republicans routed by >10 points. Many would have expected the same in a hypothetical future 2020 presidential with ~160m voters.

5) While the strength of Democrats in the state has been held together almost exclusively by the remarkable local influencing power of the DFL, polarization, generational turnover and a lack of interest in day-to-day civic participation means people are less likely to cross party lines for any contest whatsoever.

All good points, but they can all be mostly explained otherwise.

1) Even with that happening, Democrats won the House ballot by double-digits. The 2020 vote was much closer, although that was mostly due to Ilhan Omar's significant underperformance. The 2018 House races looked like the national trends on steroids (apart from MN-07).

2) That's a straight-up fact. My only response would be that that sort of vote has held up in some other strongly blue states.

3) I don't know that I agree. Trump was held under 45% in 2016. There's a case to be made, but I don't necessarily agree.

4) I totally agree. I believed the same before I saw it happen. I remember when they said 120m+ would've assured a Kerry victory in 2004. I meant that Minnesota has had an engaged electorate for years. It's routinely been one of the highest turnout states, if not the highest. Minnesota is a not a recently engaged high turnout state like many have become over the 2018 and 2020 elections.

5) That is a valid point, but it's one of the fears I heard after Trump came close to winning the state in 2016. It is now an extremely geographically polarized state. However, I point to President Biden's win as a counterpoint. I made a write-up about Minnesota before the election and the result actually completely validated what I said. See here and here.

[neostassenite31]

1) The only 2 static House districts in 2018 nationally that flipped D-to-R were in Minnesota.

This is a very good demonstration of the technical effectiveness and organizing prowess of the Minnesota DFL as a political organization. The position of the statewide house total in 2018 (D+11 points) relative to the nation did move to the right compared to 2012 or 2014, but slightly less so compared to the rest of the Upper Midwest (except IL).

2) It's an 85% white electorate that's disproportionately older and working-class.

Minnesota is definitively very white. However, the percentage of older people (as variously defined by the census) and the median age of MN are both almost exactly around the national average. MN also has the youngest median age of all Midwestern states and the highest % of people under both age 18 and age 5 per the census.

MN is also not quite "disproportionately" working class. All 2018 and 2020 exit polls show an electorate that's somewhere between 44-48% white non-college, which means white working-class voters is certainly the largest voter bloc in the state, but less so relatively to all other Midwestern states except IL.

3) It's quite possible that Trump would have won MN in 2016 had third-party preferencing been lower.

This is likely correct. Republicans in the MN Legislature won between 49-50% of the statewide vote in 2016 across the two chambers and defeated the DFL statewide by 1.2 points in the state house total, outright receiving more votes than Hillary Clinton's total in Minnesota that year.

4) Over the past 5 years, it's been readily proven that high turnout is no longer inherently 100% good for Democrats: a 100m+ electorate in 2010 or 2014 likely would have seen Republicans routed by >10 points. Many would have expected the same in a hypothetical future 2020 presidential with ~160m voters.

High turnout in MN indeed doesn't seem to help one party or the other. Over the past decade, the Democratic base in Minnesota has primarily been secular white voters with college degrees, not racial minorities, although this is beginning to change. White voters with college degrees in MN backed Biden by nearly 30 points in 2020 but only voted Democrat down-ballot by around 15-20 points, and their "elasticity" when voting on the same ballot certainly seem to validate your point.

5) While the strength of Democrats in the state has been held together almost exclusively by the remarkable local influencing power of the DFL, polarization, generational turnover and a lack of interest in day-to-day civic participation means people are less likely to cross party lines for any contest whatsoever.

The post-Trump era view of the various campaign committees about MN's partisan politics has been that the DFL has indeed traditionally overperformed relatively to the state's expected demographic baseline, but that the said baseline itself still retains a small Democratic tilt even when state party effectiveness is removed as a factor. The DFL's local "ancestral" strength in far-flung exurban WWC areas began to crumble in 2016, continued its demise even in 2018, and has largely evaporated by 2020 except for a few residual state legislative seats in the "Iron Range" that the DFL is guaranteed to lose this upcoming November. It's also worth remembering that rural counties in MN actually voted slightly more Republican in 2020 than rural counties in neighboring WI and about as Republican as rural counties in IA, both states that were more Republican statewide than MN.

The fact is that Democrats could actually get a majority in both houses of the MN legislature solely by holding all of the Twin Cities' second and third ring suburban districts without winning a single district anywhere else in the state (though only with a bare ~1-2 seat majority). Furthermore, if things break down to purely national trends of urban/suburban vs rural/exurban, the Minneapolis/St. Paul core and inner suburbs also has enough population to keep the state at a minimum competitive in federal statewide elections for years to come.

[politicallefty]

3) It's quite possible that Trump would have won MN in 2016 had third-party preferencing been lower.

This is likely correct. Republicans in the MN Legislature won between 49-50% of the statewide vote in 2016 across the two chambers and defeated the DFL statewide by 1.2 points in the state house total, outright receiving more votes than Hillary Clinton's total in Minnesota that year.

In the Legislature perhaps, but not for the US House. Democrats won there 50.23-46.73.

[Minnesota Mike]

While I agree with a lot of this, let me play Devil's Advocate.

Counterpoints:

1) The only 2 static House districts in 2018 nationally that flipped D-to-R were in Minnesota.

2) It's an 85% white electorate that's disproportionately older and working-class.

3) It's quite possible that Trump would have won MN in 2016 had third-party preferencing been lower.

4) Over the past 5 years, it's been readily proven that high turnout is no longer inherently 100% good for Democrats: a 100m+ electorate in 2010 or 2014 likely would have seen Republicans routed by >10 points. Many would have expected the same in a hypothetical future 2020 presidential with ~160m voters.

5) While the strength of Democrats in the state has been held together almost exclusively by the remarkable local influencing power of the DFL, polarization, generational turnover and a lack of interest in day-to-day civic participation means people are less likely to cross party lines for any contest whatsoever.

2) Minnesota is 10th in the nation in percentage of the population 25 and older with a Bachelors degree or higher, highest in the Midwest. Minnesota is 13th nationally in median household income, again highest in the Midwest. Minnesota is also nearly exactly at median US age, only 0.1 year older than the national median. Saying the electorate is disproportionately older and working-class is just wrong.

3) Third party voting in MN has historically helped Republicans. Trump had almost the same percentage of the vote in 2020 as in 2016, the reason Biden won the state by a much larger margin than Hillary is he picked up the 2016 3rd party votes.

[MT Treasurer]

It's fairly absurd how well Democratic Governors are holding up in polling relative to the national climate. Maybe that's because it will end up being irrelevant as we've seen before...but the fact that people like Walz - along with Governors like JBE, Beshear and Kelly - aren't just above water but have absolute majority approvals is surely not in line with the national climate. If there does remain some semblance of a divide between national climate and gubernatorial support in 2022, then I could see somebody like Walz (a Democratic incumbent in a predominantly-Democratic state) winning by 10 points even if the GCB for MN is in the low single digits.

There are a couple of red flags which suggest that this is more of a mirage/yet another polling issue rather than an actual sign of residual down-ballot D strength or some dramatic Democratic overperformance relative to the GCB:

- It seems to disproportionately affect Democratic governors in the Midwest, which remains the one region where polling has most consistently overestimated Democratic strength in recent election cycles.
- It seems to apply to virtually all the Democratic governors, even those who have prioritized a base-first/only strategy, never had any crossover appeal whatsoever, or have actively antagonized the other side (see the 'surprisingly' wide Pritzker lead, the 'surprisingly' good polls for Whitmer, etc.). If this were just a KS phenomenon, it might be explained by Kelly having succeeded in cultivating an image as a moderate, but it’s not.
- Some of these Democratic governors are even outperforming Biden's 2020 numbers in their states, which, even when factoring in a potential D outperformance of the Democratic President's approval numbers (which, in all fairness, did occur in 2014 in surprisingly many races), just isn’t believable in this environment and given the sharp rightward swings we saw in VA/NJ.  

Even if one is still inclined to attach importance to polling (and I’d advise against that), I’d at least suggest paying close attention to the Democratic % share, not the actual 'margin'/size of the lead ('undecideds' are likely to break heavily Republican when factoring in the environment and all the above points).

From a mere 'fundamentals' perspective, however, there is nothing believable about Walz or Pritzker matching, much less exceeding, their 2018 numbers this year.

[Adam Griffin]

2) Minnesota is 10th in the nation in percentage of the population 25 and older with a Bachelors degree or higher, highest in the Midwest. Minnesota is 13th nationally in median household income, again highest in the Midwest. Minnesota is also nearly exactly at median US age, only 0.1 year older than the national median. Saying the electorate is disproportionately older and working-class is just wrong.

That's great, but you seem to be talking about people whereas I'm talking about the electorate. Sadly the best data comparisons we have available between the state and the country are exit polls. As far as electorate age goes, there is a huge chasm between the US electorate and MN's. In 2018, even West Virginia had a younger overall electorate than Minnesota.



With regard to income, I did misspeak: based on the over/under $50k income brackets, MN's electorate is effectively identical to the US's electorate.

3) Third party voting in MN has historically helped Republicans. Trump had almost the same percentage of the vote in 2020 as in 2016, the reason Biden won the state by a much larger margin than Hillary is he picked up the 2016 3rd party votes.

That last part was true in most places: Biden improved over Clinton by a margin comparable to the major 3P share from 2016. While 3P presence may help the MNGOP in some situations, I highly doubt it could be argued so in 2016. Trying to argue that Clinton could have received much more than 25% of Johnson's vote or that Trump could have pulled even a sizeable double-digit share of Stein's is simply outlandish. And since there were so many available protest candidates on the MN ballot in 2016, it's difficult to argue that hordes of people simply had to vote for a candidate wildly different from their own ideological preferences in order to register their disdain with the major parties. A sensible breakdown and reassigning of 3P voters from 2016 would lead to anywhere from a tied outcome to a 1-point Trump win.  

[Minnesota Mike]

2) Minnesota is 10th in the nation in percentage of the population 25 and older with a Bachelors degree or higher, highest in the Midwest. Minnesota is 13th nationally in median household income, again highest in the Midwest. Minnesota is also nearly exactly at median US age, only 0.1 year older than the national median. Saying the electorate is disproportionately older and working-class is just wrong.

That's great, but you seem to be talking about people whereas I'm talking about the electorate. Sadly the best data comparisons we have available between the state and the country are exit polls. As far as electorate age goes, there is a huge chasm between the US electorate and MN's. In 2018, even West Virginia had a younger overall electorate than Minnesota.



With regard to income, I did misspeak: based on the over/under $50k income brackets, MN's electorate is effectively identical to the US's electorate.

3) Third party voting in MN has historically helped Republicans. Trump had almost the same percentage of the vote in 2020 as in 2016, the reason Biden won the state by a much larger margin than Hillary is he picked up the 2016 3rd party votes.

That last part was true in most places: Biden improved over Clinton by a margin comparable to the major 3P share from 2016. While 3P presence may help the MNGOP in some situations, I highly doubt it could be argued so in 2016. Trying to argue that Clinton could have received much more than 25% of Johnson's vote or that Trump could have pulled even a sizeable double-digit share of Stein's is simply outlandish. And since there were so many available protest candidates on the MN ballot in 2016, it's difficult to argue that hordes of people simply had to vote for a candidate wildly different from their own ideological preferences in order to register their disdain with the major parties. A sensible breakdown and reassigning of 3P voters from 2016 would lead to anywhere from a tied outcome to a 1-point Trump win.  

2020 Exit polls in MN have Biden winning 2016 3rd party voters 54-35.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-minnesota.html?action=click&module=ELEX_results&pgtype=Interactive&region=StateSubNav

[Schiff for Senate]

While I always believed that Walz will remain competitive and could prevail regardless of the national environment, I do not believe that he will outperform his 11-point margin in 2018.  

He won't cross his 2018 margin, but he's not losing either. It's Safe Democratic, and the chances of him losing and winning by more than 2018 are about the same - 0% (the only way he possibly crosses 11 points is if Lindell is the Republican candidate).