Title: Is Minnesota a Red or Blue State in 2018? | Minnesota Monthly
Headings: Is Minnesota a Red or Blue State in 2018?
Is Minnesota a Red or Blue State in 2018?
From Nonpartisan to Polarized
Hillary’s Purple-State Blues
What Is Changing?
What Has Remained?
Digital Extra: How Are You Voting?
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Content: Today, University of Minnesota political studies professor Larry Jacobs in fact describes Minnesota as “polka-dotted.” The Twin Cities vote as blue as liberal California while some rural districts vote as red as parts of Alabama. And even now, that ground is shifting: Minnesota’s eight congressional districts, torn between the GOP and DFL by 4-4 or 5-3 since the late-’90s, could realign come November. Trump, when he visited the reddening northeast, surely realized this. Hillary’s Purple-State Blues
Minnesota’s record streak of Democratic presidential wins means less today than it used to—with votes in 2016 looking drastically different than they did even just a decade ago. Still, prior to the last election, political analysts sounded confident Hillary Clinton would clinch Minnesota. A Democratic candidate has won here in every presidential contest following Nixon’s 1972 landslide, the longest blue stretch in history. Famously, when Ronald Reagan turned the rest of the country red in 1984, Minnesota was the lone state carried by Democratic contender (and native son) Walter Mondale. But it came close in 2016.