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: Clinton won here by just 43,785 votes—a 1.5-percent edge, less than her 2.1-point edge in the popular vote nationwide. ( A “competitive” margin, political researchers say, is five points or fewer.) Just eight years before, Barack Obama had beaten John McCain in Minnesota by 298,045 votes—a 10.2-point edge, three more points than nationwide. And in 2012, Obama’s 7.7-point victory here surpassed his national margin by 3.8 points. A key contributing factor: Clinton’s campaign never stopped in Minnesota (while Trump’s did twice). Also, 9 percent of state voters cast ballots for neither Trump nor Clinton—the most since Independent Ross Perot ran in the mid-’90s. Finally, Trump’s resonance with small-town America, including Minnesota’s strapped mining and farming communities, evidently boosted rural turnout (often Republican), while urban turnout (often Democratic) dipped, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Clinton still won Minnesota, but times have clearly changed: Obama took half the state’s 87 counties in 2008, about a third in 2012, and Clinton carried only nine in 2016.