Minnesota has voted Democratic for president in every election since 1976 — the longest active streak of any state, the last Republican win on its record dating to 1972. In 1984 it was the one state Ronald Reagan did not carry, by the closest margin in the country: Walter Mondale, the state’s own former senator, won it by 3,761 votes out of more than two million cast, two-tenths of a point. The streak has narrowed since. Joe Biden carried the state by 7.1 points in 2020; Kamala Harris held it by 4.2 in 2024, a slip of 2.9 points as the nation moved toward Donald Trump.
What holds Minnesota now is the Twin Cities. Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, voted Democratic by 42.4 points in 2024; Ramsey County, which holds St. Paul, by 43.1 — the bluest county in the state. The two metropolitan counties cast nearly a million of the state’s 3.25 million votes, and the suburban ring has moved with them: Dakota County by 12.8 points and Washington County by 8.9, both Democratic. Against that weight, every one of Minnesota’s other major regions tilts the other way, and the gap between the urban core and the rest is the widest fault line on the state’s map.
The clearest movement of the past decade is in the north. St. Louis County, which holds Duluth and the eastern Iron Range, voted Democratic by 29.6 points in 2012 and by only 13.7 in 2024 — the margin cut in half. Itasca County, around Grand Rapids, went further: Democratic by 9.8 points in 2012, it has voted Republican since 2016 and by 20.1 points in 2024. The iron-mining belt that ran Democratic by wide margins a dozen years ago is now split, while the farm counties of the south and west run heavily Republican — Morrison County, the reddest in the state, by 55.9 points.