President Trump’s on firmer footing to flip Minnesota for the first time in almost half a century as political ground in the state shifts after George Floyd’s death this summer.
Trump’s campaign bragged Tuesday about forcing Democratic 2020 presidential nominee Joe Biden’s team to adopt a defensive posture in Minnesota. The state hasn’t supported a Republican White House hopeful since Richard Nixon in 1972, the longest blue streak in the country.
“We are going all in on Minnesota. We think it’s a state we can win,” Trump adviser Jason Miller said.
On a press call, Miller also talked up the Trump camp’s plans to spend $14 million in Minnesota during the final nine weeks before the Nov. 3 election.
Miller’s swagger coincides with promising state polls.
Polling was relatively sparse in the dead of summer. Yet Biden averaged a double-digit lead in those surveys until the end of July. That berth was mostly due to widespread disapproval over Trump’s handling of race issues after Floyd, a black man, was killed in Minneapolis police custody on Memorial Day. The two-term vice president’s still ahead as Election Day nears, but by a tighter margin of 5.9 points, at least by FiveThirtyEight’s count.
Minnesota awarded its 10 electoral votes to Trump’s 2016 Democratic nemesis after Hillary Clinton clinched the state by 1.5 percentage points, or almost 45,000 votes. Four years later, Biden aides project confidence, though the candidate himself has offered evidence to the contrary.
Biden told donors last week Minnesota would be among his first stops when he returns to the campaign trail in earnest later this month, along with Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He’s only sporadically appeared in public since the coronavirus pandemic curtailed his travel in March.
Lawrence Jacobs, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, attributed Trump’s polling to his investment in the state after his surprisingly strong 2016 performance.
In contrast, Biden’s team delayed doling out money for Minnesota.
While Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar had aided the campaign’s efforts in her home state, taking part in its packed schedule of virtual events, Biden wasn’t on the air until this week. In fact, Biden’s paid media strategists moved up an ad buy that was slated to start after Labor Day. Part of a $280 million, 15-state TV and digital ad reservation announced in August, two spots pushing a healthcare message and Biden’s working-class roots premiered Tuesday in the Twin Cities, Duluth, and Rochester.
Trump was targeting Minnesota because it was one of a handful of opportunities he had to expand his electoral map, Jacobs told the Washington Examiner.
“He may lose 2016 states and needs to pick up new states. Minnesota counterbalances a loss in Arizona. Winning the Upper Midwest is nearly the same Electoral College votes as Florida. Those are the Trump calculations,” he said.
For Jacobs, the politics were playing out against a backdrop of civil unrest. Two rounds of riots after Floyd’s death “may have rattled some voters,” he said.
Eric Ostermeier, who curates the Minnesota Historical Election Archive and writes the Smart Politics blog, similarly raised heightened tensions in Minnesota. Riots erupted in Minneapolis again last week after deadly clashes between protesters and counterprotesters over racial injustice and police brutality allegations in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
More polling had to be done before links could be made between Trump’s “law and order” rhetoric and public opinion trends among suburban swing voters and independents, according to Ostermeier. For the time being, persuadable voters seemed to be giving Biden the benefit of the doubt, he said.
“However, if there are additional riots in the state in the coming weeks and the response by the local and state government is deemed feckless and enabling, President Trump may be able to seize upon this opportunity and create a Minnesota miracle for his party,” he added.
Trump officials downplayed the violence. Instead, they credited the president’s standing to Minnesota’s political fluctuations.
Former President Barack Obama won Minnesota in 2008 with 42 counties but claimed victory four years later with only 28 counties, they said. And Clinton eked out a win in 2016, carrying just nine counties. In addition to 2018 Republican gains in Congress, Trump outperformed 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney in Minnesota’s rural counties as well, although the president fell short of him in the suburbs.
Minnesotans were “tired of career politicians’ lip service with no results,” Trump spokeswoman Samantha Zager told the Washington Examiner of the president’s position.
“Joe Biden abandoned the hardworking men and women in states like Minnesota in favor of a radical agenda that would tax them into oblivion and regulate every aspect of their lives,” she said. “And now, he’s paying the price, quite literally, having to spend money in a state that used to be safely Democrat.”
Biden spokeswoman Jenn Ridder scoffed at the Trump camp’s premise. She argued Minnesotans “recognize that Joe Biden will unify our country, fight for working families, and help our economy build back better.”
“Working closely with the DFL Party, we’ve built a sophisticated organization that’s connecting with voters in every corner of the state who know that Trump’s incompetent response to the pandemic has cost too many Minnesotans their lives, destroyed their jobs, and driven the strong economy Trump inherited from the Obama-Biden administration off a cliff,” she said, referring to the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party.
