Democratic nominee Joe Biden won Minnesota, defeating President Trump for a major Midwestern victory.
Biden was receiving more than 55% of the vote, with most precincts reporting and leading Trump by approximately 10 percentage points. The Trump campaign invested much time and resources in trying to flip Minnesota after coming close to winning the state four years ago. But the former vice president put Minnesota away early with a solid win, keeping his path to 270 Electoral College votes alive in a tight race with Trump.
Minnesota is a historically Democratic state that has voted Republican for president just once in the past 80 years, supporting Richard Nixon over Democratic Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota in 1972. Minnesota has behaved more like a swing state in recent years, with Trump coming within 1.5 percentage points of winning the state’s 10 Electoral College votes in 2016 while showing competitiveness in the race for the White House again in 2020.
That was evident in the extra attention that Biden and Trump paid to Minnesota voters after Labor Day during the homestretch of the campaign.
Biden and his prominent supporters visited multiple times. The former vice president campaigned on the state’s northeastern Iron Range, a region that is flush with white working-class voters, while Biden’s wife, Jill, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts were dispatched to the heavily suburban Twin Cities. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence stumped in Minnesota repeatedly, hosting packed events each time.
At the outset of the presidential race, Trump campaign officials were bullish on Minnesota.
They singled out the Midwestern battleground as one of the president’s few offensive targets across a largely defensive playing field. Some Republicans predicted Trump would benefit from the civil unrest that unfolded in the wake of George Floyd’s death and left Minneapolis smoldering and the liberal Minneapolis City Council vowing to “defund” the police department. The developments might bolster Trump’s “law and order” message and allow the president to pin the blame for the chaos on Biden.
But Democrats were skeptical the liberal bastion would support the president, particularly amid a coronavirus pandemic that put the economy in a deep recession. Heading into Election Day, despite the devastating riots in Minneapolis, Biden maintained a lead over Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, topping the incumbent 48% to 42%.
And despite riots that devastated Minneapolis, creating an issue that might benefit Trump and lend credence to his “law and order” pitch, public opinion polls did not show any movement away from Biden. Still, Trump was holding out hope that he might add Minnesota to his list of “blue wall” states that he tore down on the heels of his victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin four years ago.
Precise numbers detailing how key blocs voted in Minnesota were not yet available. But Trump held significant advantages with the blue-collar voters who dominate the state’s mining and farming communities. Biden’s strength was rooted in the suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the state capital, that dominate Minnesota’s voting-age population.
