Some of you probably remember Richard Nixon. And many of you voted for him. Fifty years later, you might even admit you did. That was the last time a Republican won the presidency in Minnesota. In the last 66 years, Nixon’s 1972 win was the only one for a Republican candidate.
Still, Minnesota has a color problem. Minnesota’s color problem rises from three of my favorite topics –journalism, politics and maps.
Let’s start with journalism. National reporters keep calling Minnesota a purple state and compare us to Michigan. Maybe the east-coast-centric journalists get the two states mixed up. Both names start with M, both are in the Midwest far beyond the last subway stop, the weather is cold and snowy, both have beautiful lakes and woods, both border the Great Lakes and the Edmund Fitzgerald was heading from a Duluth/Superior dock to Detroit when it sank.
Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty was the last Republican to win a statewide race. Since 2006, the score in statewide race: DFL 30, GOP 1. That’s far from a red wave and hardly a purple ripple.
On Nov. 8, DFLers again won all statewide offices. With Gov. Tim Walz’s re-election, DFLers have held the governor’s office for 16 consecutive years.
Reflecting on the DFL run, Pawlenty told the StarTribune, “If you haven’t closed a sale with your product in more than 15 years, it’s long past the time to get a better product, better marketing or both.”
In his two successful races, Walz campaigned on the slogan “One Minnesota.” It’s not real. A look at a couple of maps shows why.
When we view national congressional districts maps – blue for seats held by Democrats, red for seats represented by Republicans – Minnesota does appear red. But zoom in and the viewer finds four of Minnesota’s eight congressional districts represented by Democrats. Those four districts are clustered around the densely populated Twin Cities, where most Minnesotans live. Congressional districts are drawn to represent people, not land because land doesn’t vote, people do. To balance those dense metro areas, lots of sparsely populated land is needed. The Seventh District, represented by Republican Michelle Fischbach, is a good example. The sprawling Seventh covers the western third of the state, from the Canadian border to one county north of the Iowa border. After the 2020 Census, planners need to add more people to balance with other growing districts, such as the Sixth. To include more people, the border of the district in Stearns County crept farther east to include St. Stephen and the north half of St. Wendel Township.
Another map initially presents Minnesota as very red. A closer look contradicts the One Minnesota notion as well as the purple state designation. After the Nov. 8 election, the StarTribune created a map showing how Walz and Scott Jensen fared in each of Minnesota’s 4,103 precincts. When viewing the entire state, there’s a sea of red (precincts Jensen won) surrounding the bluer Twin Cities. But zoom in and you’ll see islands of blue not only in the Twin Cities but outstate in St. Cloud, Rochester, Mankato, Moorhead and Duluth. Some of those blue precincts are very blue with Walz winning between 70 and 80 percent of the vote. St. Cloud tilted to Walz with some precincts around 70 percent. Parts of St. Joseph favored Walz too, but the Sartell-St. Stephen area shows up deep red.
Pawlenty, the former governor, summed it up in the StarTribune interview: “Minnesota is clearly not a red state – or even a purple state. If it were, the path forward for Republicans would be simple. The red or purple state playbooks don’t usually work in blue states.”
In future elections, Republicans will continue to win sprawling, rural districts, but Democrats dominate in urban areas. Beyond the metro area and a handful of outstate cities, it will be tough for any Republican to win statewide for one simple reason — there are fewer voters in conservative areas of the state. While Walz touts One Minnesota, there are clearly two, very different Minnesotas.
