While Minnesota is currently Democrats’ longest presidential winning streak, there was once no Democratic Party at all in the state of Minnesota. An idiosyncratic Upper Midwestern hotbed of union labor, the state continues to be a reliable bet for the Democrats and a white whale for the Republicans.
Early History – A Northern Frontier
Minnesota was first explored by French fur traders in the late 1650s. True exploration would not follow until the 1700s, when explorers searching for the Northwest Passage would pass through the state. Early industry was created by competing fur traders, the North West Company and the Hudson Bay’s Company, the latter of which would facilitate a massive land purchase that included parts of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba. Some parts of this area were considered property of British North America – now Canada – and resulted in future land disputes.
The Anglo-American Convention following the War of 1812 would set the U.S.-Canada border at the 49th Parallel, except for a small piece of land called the Northwest Angle. This part is the piece of northern-central Minnesota that juts out into Canada, which makes Minnesota the northernmost state of the Lower 48. Minnesota had belonged to four separate territories before becoming its own.
Fort Snelling was established as the first military post in Minnesota in 1825. The Fort was the home of Dred Scott, a slave whose residence in a “free” state led to the landmark Supreme Court case Scott v. Sanford. Simultaneously, treaties between the U.S. and the Native Americans opened up Minnesota to further development. Fort Snelling would later serve as the basis for Minneapolis and St. Paul, the so-called “Twin Cities” that are the state’s largest cities today.
Minnesota became the thirty-second state on May 11, 1858, after much delay due to slavery negotiations and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Civil War & Industrialization – The Twin Cities and the Iron Range
Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey (R) was the first Union governor to pledge support to President Lincoln (R-IL). Minnesota sent 24,000 troops to fight in the Civil War and the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment changed the course of the Battle of Gettysburg. Although all in the Regiment died, they held the line against the Confederates and aided the Union forces to victory.
After the war, Minnesota attracted mostly European and agricultural settlers. The 1862 Homestead Act marketed the land as cheap and fertile, spiking immigration to the region. Railroads connected the northern part of the state to Winnipeg, Manitoba, as well as Minneapolis with St. Louis, Missouri. The railroads required a need for regulation rates, as railroads would charge subjective weight rates as they related to grain elevators. After much-needed reform was bipartisanly enacted, flour milling became a huge industry in Minnesota. By 1900, the state was grinding about 14% of the nation’s grain. Pillsbury and the Washburn-Crosby Company (a predecessor of General Mills) were founded in Minneapolis.
The Industrial Revolution also brought one of the first hydroelectric power plants in the country in the form of a Saint Anthony Falls plant built in 1882. Iron mining began in northern Minnesota in 1884, which would establish the economically and politically powerful region known as the “Iron Range,” which is still significant today. Duluth, located in the Iron Range, grew from a small town to a large city based almost solely on iron mining. The Minneapolis Grain Exchange made the Twin Cities the population center of Minnesota. Just south of the Twin Cities is Rochester, where Saint Mary’s Hospital was opened in 1889. The hospital was developed after the devastating 1883 Rochester Tornado. St. Mary’s would later become the Mayo Clinic.
The Great Depression caused layoffs in the Iron Range and the accompanied drought hurt the rest of the state’s agricultural profile. Governor Floyd Olson, a member of the Farmer-Labor Party, signed an order that instituted a minimum wage, a predecessor of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that would establish a national minimum wage. Minnesota’s populist-progressive culture allowed the state to pioneer labor and tax reforms, such as property tax reductions for farmers and homeowners, the creation of a state income tax, child labor amendments, and a state old-age pension system.
The state would first participate in a presidential election in 1860, when it would back Lincoln by a landslide. Minnesota would back Republicans in each election from 1860 until 1932, except for 1912. A mostly agricultural-industrial state, only certain suburban counties of the Twin Cities would be somewhat Democratic; the rest of the state was firmly Republican. Theodore Roosevelt’s (R-NY) 74% of the vote and sweep of all eighty-seven counties is the best Presidential result in Minnesota to date. Roosevelt would win the state firmly in 1912 on his Bull Moose-Progressive Party line, making it one of six states to back him in that election. The 1912 election also saw the best performance to date for a Socialist candidate, in this case Eugene V. Debs. No Socialist candidate has since eclipsed his 8.2% of the statewide vote. Two Iron Range counties – of four nationally – backed Debs.
Signaling a change in moods, Charles E. Hughes (R-NY) would become the last Republican to win Minnesota but lose the national election in 1916. As the Iron Range began to flirt with more Populist policies, the region would become a solid fit for FDR’s (D-NY) New Deal program. Democrats would begin their foothold in Minnesota in 1932. From then until 2020, the state has only backed Republicans three times. Not only did the voting streak completely change, but after 1956, no Republican candidate would ever surpass 70% of the vote in any of Minnesota’s counties until Donald Trump in 2016.
Twentieth Century Politics – Birth of the state Democratic Party
Part of the newly-minted Democratic strength in Minnesota politics came in the form of the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party. The party never recovered after the Civil War, and when the Farmer-Labor Party was founded in 1918, the Democratic Party was considered a third party in the state. The cooperation of the aforementioned Farmer-Labor Governor Floyd Olson and FDR would allow him to become the first Democrat ever to win Minnesota in 1932. The result of the success was a fusion ticket on which Democrats still run today.
Dwight Eisenhower (D-KS) would win Minnesota by relatively-thin margins. While Hennepin County (Minneapolis) was still red-leaning, the Iron Range and agricultural counties were already transitioning into Democratic strongholds. The state last voted for the GOP in Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide re-election. He carried Minnesota narrowly over George McGovern (D-SD). This is the last time the GOP won Hennepin County. No Republican has won Minnesota since 1972, making it the longest presidential winning streak for Democrats to date, besides that of Washington, D.C.
Ronald Reagan (R-CA) came just 3,700 votes shy of carrying all fifty states in 1984, with the difference located in Minnesota. The state handily backed Jimmy Carter (D-GA) in 1976, so the state narrowly backed his vice president, Walter Mondale (D-MN), in 1984 over Reagan, as Minnesota was his home state. Minneapolis and the Iron Range were contributing factors to Reagan’s loss.
Geography
- Southeastern Minnesota – Extending from the center of the state to the Mississippi River and remaining just south of the Twin Cities’ suburbs; Rochester keeps this red-leaning region healthily competitive.
- Twin Cities Suburbs – Notable cities include Plymouth, Eagan and Minnetonka; once the bread and butter of the state GOP, now quickly trending blue
- Twin Cities – Dark blue area of Minneapolis and St. Paul; this area has been the bastion of Democratic votes since the 1970s and is regularly what throws the GOP off in close elections.
- Greater Minnesota – The entire western border of the state that also divides the Twin Cities from the Iron Range. Once blue-leaning farming communities, now staunchly Republican in the Trump Era.
- Iron Range – Continually the “one that got away” for the GOP; spans from the northern-central part of the state to the eastern tip that meets Lake Superior. Blue-leaning since the New Deal.
Current Political Leanings – A Republican White Whale
While Republicans have come close in recent years, none have won a statewide election here since Norm Coleman (R) won the 2002 Senate race.
Considered by most media outlets as a “Safe Democrat” state for Hillary Clinton, the world was shocked to see Minnesota as one of four states uncalled on election night. Clinton’s 1.5-point margin of victory allowed Trump to flip nineteen counties, on top of the fourteen Mitt Romney (R-MA) flipped in 2012. Many of these counties voted for the GOP for the first time in generations. The state voted to the right of the nation for the first time since 1952 and had the highest voter turnout in the nation that year, about 75%.
Currently, Democrats have a trifecta in the state government, control both U.S. Senate seats, and share an evenly-controlled U.S. House delegation with the GOP. Republicans have not won a gubernatorial race since 2006 and have not won a Senate race since 2002. The GOP last controlled both Senate seats in 1991.
Minnesota’s political geography lends itself to renewed competition that should not be underestimated by Democratic groups. The union, working-class counties across the state have raced to the right in the Trump Era, although the Iron Range continues to be obstinately Democratic, despite many Democratic Iron Range mayors endorsing Trump in 2020. Democrats, on the other hand, can breathe a slight sigh of relief as the urban and suburban centers trend intensely Democratic.
