Have the political winds shifted in Minnesota?
Minnesotans are moving away from DFL extremism.
By Bill Glahn, American Experiment – November 8, 2024
I guess we’ll find out for sure once the new legislature convenes in January. In the meantime, we search for signs and portents.
As for trends, I’ve been pointing to this remarkable statistic, as close as we can come to a controlled experiment in politics.
Minnesota results for Donald Trump
Trump 2016: 1,322,951 votes, 44.92 percent share of the total vote
Trump 2020 1,484,065 (45.28%)
Trump 2024: 1,518,684 (46.68%)
Donald Trump has run for President in three consecutive elections. In Minnesota, he increased his vote total and share of the vote, each time.
[Nationally, millions of votes remain to be counted, mostly in western states. Pres. Trump has already been credited with receiving more national votes than he received in the 2020 election.]
Minnesota’s eight congressional seats remain split, 4 to 4, between Republicans and Democrats.
With the exception of one vacant seat (District 45), the state senate was not on the ballot this year, but all 67 seats will be in 2026.
In the state house of representatives, Republicans flipped three seats to achieve at least a 67-67 tie. One recount is pending for a seat currently held by a Democrat (DFL).
In the Shakopee area, DFL Rep. Brad Tabke is shown as holding a 13-vote lead over his Republican challenger in results posted to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s (SOS) website. The SOS website shows 100 percent of precincts reporting.
A late-Friday-night retabulating of ballots by Scott County added a few more to each sides count and increased the Tabke lead to 14.
As our friends at Alpha News documented (with screenshots) on election night, an earlier set of “final” numbers published by the SOS showed that Rep. Tabke had, in fact, lost his re-election bid.
Here’s how the vote totals appeared on election night, also with 100 percent of precincts reporting,
Comparing the two screenshots for 54A, the Republican Paul has gained 2,660 votes, while Wolgamott gained 3,033, or 53 percent of the ballots “discovered.”
Likewise, in the St. Cloud area, DFL Rep. Dan Wolgamott, was reported to have held a slight 28-vote advantage over his Republican challenger after the initial vote count. The SOS website is now showing the incumbent with a 191-vote lead,
Based on the above, revised numbers, there will be no recount in the race, after all. Without a recount, we will never know what happened in St. Cloud.
Likewise, a local Axios reporter posted a screen shot on election night of “final” numbers showing that Rep. Wolgamott had lost his re-election bid by 4 votes,
Comparing the two screenshots for 14B, the Republican Ek has gained 110 votes, while Wolgamott gained 305, or 73 percent of the votes “discovered” post-election.
Neither the 14B nor the 54A outcome held as more ballots later appeared in those 100 percent of precincts that had already reported their results.
The MN Secretary of State, Steve Simon, has had a rough election cycle, with the above unexplained reporting anomalies, documented instances of unattended ballots in transit, a ballot board fiasco, and ballot printing errors, all of which appeared to have favored the Democrats.
If Republicans manage to hang on to the 67 seats they have already won in declared races (an increasingly dubious proposition, given the above), then the state house will need to operate under some form of power-sharing arrangement.
Perhaps that could be the catalyst for a change in tone at the capitol. At least one Democratic state senator seems to think so.
The day after the election, Sen. Grant Hauschild (DFL-Hermantown) posted a thread on X with his take on the election results. In his first term, Hauschild represents District 3, which covers Duluth and the North Shore of Lake Superior. He was not on the ballot on Tuesday. He wrote on Wednesday,
“Now that the voters have spoken, it is clear to me that Northern Minnesotans want representatives who focus on delivering for our communities and stay out of the nonsense that distract far too many politicians from the real bread-and-butter issues that matter in people’s lives.
“With the opportunity to continue serving in the Senate Majority and with a tied State House, I look forward to leveraging bipartisan solutions to advance what is best for the Northland over the next two years.”
That all sounds good, until you consider that, for the past two years, Sen. Hauschild provided the deciding vote to enact all that distracting nonsense of which he speaks. In 2022, he won election by only 700 votes out of more than 43,000 cast. This year, Trump won Hauschild’s district by about 800 votes.
There have been rumors floating about since election night that house Democrats will engage in some type of parliamentary shenanigans to maintain total control, even in a tied 67-67 chamber. The goal is, apparently, to avoid having to lay off staff, to maintain control of the floor agenda, and to control the back-office operation of the chamber.
Have Minnesotans had enough of hateful DFL extremism?
Much will depend on the attitude of Governor Tim Walz, returning in defeat from the national campaign trail. He made his first post-election public appearance in Minnesota on Friday. He took no questions, but in his remarks, he acknowledged the 1,500,000 Minnesotans who voted for Trump. While campaigning for Vice President, Walz referred to Trump supporters as “Nazis.”
Yesterday Walz mentioned the need to listen to the other side,
“I think we ought to swallow, and this is me in this as I’m speaking about myself, swallow a little bit of pride and look a little harder to find common ground with our neighbors who didn’t vote like we did in this election.”
But immediately after his speech, Walz posted on Twitter (X) about the need to “get back in the fight.” Any interest in reconciliation was already gone.
We’ll be watching.