Minnesota Republicans Set Record for Statewide Electoral Drought
The Gopher State GOP has now endured 18 years since its last victory in a statewide race – the longest drought by any major party in Minnesota history
Another election has gone by in which Minnesota Republican nominees fared competitively (Donald Trump, losing the state by 4.2 points) and lost decisively (U.S. Senate nominee Royce White, losing by 15.7 points) with the end result finding the GOP once again shut out in statewide elections for an eighth consecutive election cycle.
The Minnesota GOP has now lost 28 straight statewide elections since Governor Tim Pawlenty’s narrow 0.96-point reelection victory over Attorney General Mike Hatch in 2006.
The 18-year electoral drought in statewide races sets a new major party record in the Gopher State, eclipsing a 17-year Democratic Party span without a victory between 1873 and 1890 and a 16-year Democratic gap between 1857 and 1873.
After sweeping all statewide elections leading into statehood in October 1857, Democrats ended a 16-year drought (51 elections totaling 53 seats) in 1873 when the Republican incumbent for Treasurer, Edwin Dike, lost his party’s nomination and instead was nominated by the Democrats and Anti-Monopolists.
Dike defeated Bath Township farmer and U.S. assessor Mons Grinager by 1.6 points to claim the only Democratic statewide victory in Minnesota between 1857 and 1890.
Democrats then lost each of the subsequent 52 statewide elections across nine offices until the 1890 cycle when former Democratic Olmsted County Auditor Adolph Biermann won the open seat race for Auditor by 13.9 points over Republican Polk County Auditor P.J. McGuire.
The GOP would later notch multi-cycle sweeps through five additional stretches:
- 1894-1896: 15 elections
- 1900-1902: 17 elections, 19 seats
- 1910-1912: 20 elections, 22 seats
- 1916-1920: 24 elections
- 1924-1926: 16 elections
It has now been 74 years since the last time Minnesota Republicans swept all statewide races in a cycle. The party won all nine seats for in 1950: for Governor (incumbent Luther Youngdahl), Lieutenant Governor (incumbent C. Elmer Anderson), Secretary of State (incumbent Mike Holm), Attorney General (incumbent J.A.A. Burnquist), Auditor (incumbent Stafford King), Treasurer (St. Paul Pioneer Press-Dispatch associate editor Val Bjornson), Supreme Court Clerk (incumbent Grace Kaercher Davis), and two elections for the Railroad and Warehouse Commission (appointed incumbent Leonard Lindquist in special and general elections).
It should be noted that one quarter of these 28 consecutive GOP losses in Minnesota have been nail-biters with seven contests decided by less than two percentage points: 2008 U.S. Senate (0.01 points), 2010 Governor (0.42 points), 2010 Auditor (1.26 points), 2014 Secretary of State (1.17 points), 2016 President (1.51 points), 2022 Auditor (0.34 points), and 2022 Attorney General (0.84 points).
The current eight-cycle Democratic winning streak in Minnesota is only eclipsed by one other state: New York Democrats have won every statewide election since 2004.
California, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Minnesota are tied for the second longest streaks – victorious in every race dating back to 2008.
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– Royce White (no prior elective office held or won, true?) markedly gained ground compared to the nominees of the previous three elections; he won in a *majority of the counties* and carried *three US House districts* – among them the Duluth-anchored constituency which historically has backed the Democratic presidential tickets of various ideological leanings.
– Aside from being the longest-enduring political party in the state (neither the Farmer Labor nor the Democratic Party exists today, since each ceased to operate as a standalone entity during the third term of FDR), the Republicans have had control over at least one chamber of the Legislature in most years since Pawlenty left the post in early 2011.
– In the wake of the clear defeat of the Harris-Walz ticket (the national popular vote was empirically close, but its failure to carry NC, GA, PA, or MI has left the party red-faced indeed), has the “blue wall” at last been demolished, or has it been re-configured to comprise of just IL and MN – plus NE-02 ?