WASHINGTON (AP) — Minnesota voters will decide on Election Day how to award the state’s 10 presidential electoral votes, including whether to promote their two-term governor to the vice presidency. Minnesota briefly loomed as a possible presidential battleground in 2024, but Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris nudged the state back onto safer Democratic ground when she chose Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
Republican former President Donald Trump narrowly missed winning in Minnesota in his two previous campaigns, coming within 1.5 percentage points of victory in 2016 while also picking off its midwestern cousins, Wisconsin and Michigan. This year, he suggested on multiple occasions that he would win the state, and he tried to bolster his case with campaign stops in St.
Paul in May and St. Cloud in July , just days after President Joe Biden exited the race . Trump has not returned to Minnesota since Walz was named to the ticket.
Minnesota has a long history of backing Democrats for president. In the last 92 years dating back to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign, Minnesota has only backed two Republican presidential candidates: Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s and Richard Nixon in 1972. Further down the ballot, voters will decide which party will control both chambers of the state Legislature.
Democrats held a slim majority in the state Senate until June, when Assistant Majority Leader Kelly Morrison resigned to focus on her campaign to replace outgoing Democratic R.
