Title: Why do national polling analysts think Minnesota is a swing state? | MinnPost
Headings: Why do national polling analysts think Minnesota is a swing state?
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Why do national polling analysts think Minnesota is a swing state?
Limited data
‘Might be a swing state’
Getting (relatively) less blue
Minnesota's Partisan Voter Index
Demographics
Greta Kaul

Content: In 2012, Obama won by 8 as he won by 4 nationally. That's not like in a blue state like Massachusetts where Obama won by over 20 percentage points. On that basis alone, we'd expect the state to be fairly close if the election were close.” Getting (relatively) less blue
These polls may reflect an underlying change in Minnesota’s electorate: according to one trusted measure of a state’s partisan leanings, Minnesota has become less blue in presidential elections, relative to all U.S. states, over time. That measure is the Partisan Voting Index (PVI) by the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan organization that analyzes U.S. elections. This year, Minnesota’s PVI is D+2, which means it’s thought to be 2 percentage points more Democratic than the rest of the U.S. is, on average. In 1994, Minnesota was D+6, but dropped to D+4 in 1998 and D+3 in 2002. In 2006, it dropped to D+2, where it has remained ever since. Minnesota's Partisan Voter Index
Minnesota has become a less blue-leaning state relative to the rest of the U.S. in recent years, according to the Cook Political Report's Partisan Voter Index, a measure of how Republican or Democratic-leaning a state is.