Minnesota election preview: Key races, candidates and voter turnout details

Minnesota voters will decide on Election Day how to award the state’s 10 presidential electoral votes, including whether to nominate their two-term governor for vice president.

Minnesota briefly looked like a possible presidential battleground in 2024, but Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris pushed the state onto safer Democratic ground when she selected Gov. Tim Waltz as her running mate.

Former Republican President Donald Trump narrowly managed to win Minnesota in two previous campaigns, coming within 1.5 percentage points of victory in 2016, while also sweeping his Midwestern cousins ​​Wisconsin and Michigan. He has repeatedly tipped to win the state this year and has sought to bolster his position with campaign stops in St. Paul in May and St. Cloud in July, just days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Trump has not returned to Minnesota since Waltz was listed on the ticket.

Minnesota has a long history of supporting Democrats in presidential elections. In the past 92 years, beginning with Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 campaign, Minnesota has supported only two Republican presidential candidates: Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s and Richard Nixon in 1972.

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Voters will then go to the polls to decide which party will control both houses 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 Democrat Dean Phillips in the 3rd Congressional District. Morrison’s departure left the chamber deadlocked with 33 seats each.

The special election to replace her in Hennepin County pits Democrat Ann Johnson Stewart against Republican Kathleen Fowke. Johnson Stewart is a civil engineer and former state senator elected in 2020. During her only term, the redistricting process landed her in the same district as Morrison, prompting her not to seek re-election in 2022. Fowke, a real estate agent, was the Republican candidate for the seat in 2022. She received about 44% of the vote to Morrison’s 56%. The winner in November will give his party control of the Senate for two years. There are no other state Senate seats open this year.

In the state House of Representatives, Republicans only need a net gain of a few seats to gain control of the chamber. All 134 seats in the state House of Representatives are up for election in November. Of those, about two dozen swing seats are at the highest risk of changing hands, according to an August analysis by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

National Republican and Democratic state legislative committees have indicated that winning or retaining control of the Minnesota Legislature is a top priority for 2024.

Control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is also at stake on Election Day, although the Minnesota race is not expected to determine a majority in either chamber. In the US Senate race, Democratic incumbent Amy Klobuchar is seeking a fourth term against Republican Royce White. In the US House of Representatives, Phillips is the only speaker not seeking re-election. The eight-person delegation is evenly split between the parties, and the November 5 election is unlikely to upset that balance.

Voters will also decide a nonpartisan race for the state Supreme Court and a statewide vote on expanding the environmental trust fund.

Around 27% of voters voted by post in the 2022 general election. To be counted, ballots must arrive by mail before election day.

Early votes in Minnesota are usually announced shortly after the polls close at 9:00 p.m. ET. Historically, these initial vote lots have typically included a mix of in-person, mail-in, and Election Day votes at the polls.

The AP does not make predictions and will only announce a winner when it determines there is no scenario in which the trailing candidates close the gap. If a race has not been declared, AP will continue to cover any major events, such as candidate concessions or victory announcements. At the same time, AP will explain that it has not yet announced a winner and explain why.

Robert Yun of the Associated Press wrote about it. AP writers Hannah Fingerhut and Maya Swidler contributed to this report.