Walz easily winning but failing to retain Winona and Mower in his old congressional district
Winona is especially weird because it actually voted straight Republican on all races, even for the loony election denier running for Secretary of State who lost by a wide margin. It's the only Biden county where that happened, even as Walz picked up Rice County that Biden didn't win.
I initially assumed turnout at Winona State might've sucked like in 2016 but actually Jensen ran well ahead of Johnson in 2018 and actually ahead of Biden in 2020 in raw votes although that's not a fair comparison because Winona State was fully remote at that time. But even compared to 2018 there was no notable drop in turnout. Rural Winona County swung hard but even Winona proper did. The explanation for this is Walz's personal vote from his time in Congress fading but even that doesn't explain the drop from Biden. So the only explanations I can think of is it's something related to Winona being in a Wisconsin media market (but with the cash differentials for each candidate, it wouldn't make sense for Jensen to run ads there but not Walz) or some very local thing really soured voters onto Walz. Or maybe the Winona County DFL dropped the ball with their ground game and the Winona State College Republicans got some very amazing turnout guy running things now...probably would need local insider info.
