The DFL has lost five straight gubernatorial elections and six of the last eight dating to the “Minnesota Massacre” of 1978. (If you don’t recall, the Repubs picked up both U.S. Senate seats and the governorship in that one election.)
This confuses the national observer class, which thinks Minnesota is a solid blue state, based mostly on the fact that Minnesota holds the current longest streak of any state of going blue in presidential election (the last time Minnesota went red in the Electoral College was the Nixon landslide of 1972).
Why is this? I’ve asked a number of politically insightful Minnesotans, and the answer tends to be a mélange of roughly these four analysis points:
- Unelectable DFL nominees. (Sometimes this one is blamed on the workings of the endorsement system, although one of the losing DFL nominees, Skip Humphrey, lost the endorsement and then won the primary, largely — as I recall it — on the argument that the Humphrey name made him the electable one. The trouble with electability arguments is that you find out afterwards who was the electable one. Humphrey was the only DFL nominee ever to finish third. In 2006, Mike Hatch was nominated, at least in part, because DFLers believed he knew how to win).
- IP influence. (Many DFLers believe that the Independence Party ticket takes more votes from Dems than from Repubs and that the DFL would have won all or most of the last three guv elections without the IP candidate on the ballot, although the evidence for this is not bulletproof. Personally, I am most convinced that this was true in 2006.)
- Weird flukes. (Rudy Perpich loses to Arne Carlson in 1990 after Carlson is added to the ticket in the final weeks after the probably-less-electable Jon Grunseth resigns the nomination. The Wellstone plane crash and the public reaction to the memorial service scrambled the 2002 election in the final days. Hatch woulda won if he had kept his temper under wraps for one more week. And, if you go all the way back to 1978, Rudy Perpich’s connection to the Wendell Anderson self-appointment imbroglio may have handed that whole year to the Repubs.)
- Conservative tide. Since the Carter-Reagan contest in 1980, the Republican less-government argument has been ascendant more often than the Democratic more-government argument. (One problem with this one is that post-Reagan, Dems have won three of six presidential elections and Minnesota has gone for the Democratic ticket in all six of those election, plus three more before that.)
But if you keep thinking about all those Dem presidential wins mixed in with all those Repub gubernatorial wins, you’ll practically have the secret explanation for all those DFL guv elections losses (or at least the explanation I’ve been leading up to all this time.)
They never happen at the same time. Minnesota’s gubernatorial elections are always at the midterm of presidential terms. OK, maybe that seems obvious. But it’s a big deal anyway because …
Voter turnout is always lower, and significantly lower, in non-presidential election years. I calculated the turnout in Minnesota elections going back to 1974. In the nine presidential cycles, the average voter turnout was 75.5 percent of those eligible to vote. (Undoubtedly the highest in the nation, by the way.) By contrast, in the nine midterm years — aka the nine years in which gubernatorial elections were held — the average turnout was 57.7 percent, almost 20 percentage points less. The highest turnout in a gubernatorial year was lower than the lowest turnout in a presidential year.
(If you want the raw data, follow this link to the MN Secretary of State’s website and click on “Minnesota election statistics, 1950-2008” for a pdf of turnout figures.)
And that, of course, is a big deal because high-turnout elections are considered to give an advantage to Democrats, and low-turnout elections give an advantage to Republicans, presumably (I suspect political scientists have some data that makes this more than a presumption) because a larger portion of Republicans turn out for every election, while a larger portion of Democratic voters drop into and out of the electorate depending, on their level of enthusiasm.
If you’re skeptical about this, here’s one more way to demonstrate it. Because U.S. Senate terms are six years, they are out of sync with the cycle in which presidential and gubernatorial elections alternate every two years. Senate elections are just as likely to be in presidential or gubernatorial years. Going back to 1972 there have been 14 U.S. Senate elections in Minnesota. Democrats have won seven of them, and Republicans have won seven.
But if you break the Senate elections down by whether they coincided with presidential or gubernatorial election years, it turns out that…
DFLers have won the Senate race in five out of seven of the elections that were held in presidential years and Republicans have won five of the seven elections held in gubernatorial election years. I offer this only as corroboration of the hypothesis that high turnout (presidential election years) helps DFLers on the Minnesota ballot and low turnout (gubernatorial years) helps the Repubs. I’m certain that Norm Coleman would have beaten Al Franken if not for the significant jump in DFL turnout associated with the Obama campaign.
Like most states, Minnesota used to have two-year terms for governors. New Hampshire and Vermont are the only states that still have two-year terms. From statehood until the 1880s, Minnesota held its gubernatorial elections in odd-numbered years. Then, in 1962, Karl Rolvaag became the first governor elected to a four-year term. I don’t know if any thought was given to whether the state wanted its guv election aligned with presidential or mid-term election years, but 35 states ended up in the midterm years.
If I’m right — that this represents a permanent Repub advantage in guv elections and is at least a partial, if seldom-mentioned, explanation for Republican guv success — there isn’t much the DFL can do about it except try to turn out its base without the benefit of a presidential updraft.
While you may discount the impact of the DFL endorsement process on this string of losses, nothing takes the oomph out of voter turnout like a party that hides its endorsed candidates away all summer long, then magically resurfaces at the State Fair expecting total support and adoration.
You boost general election turnout by involving as many people in the primary process as humanly possible. The endorsement is all about diminishing the primary election, and that serves to dampen the turnout in November.
The DFL is its own worst enemy. Since moving here from Iowa in 1988 I have been alternately appalled or gobsmacked by the DFL’s ingrained cluelessness and rabid insistence on doing things the wrong way.
Inclusion wins elections. The endorsement process is elitism for elitists who don’t trust party members with the vote. When your own party doesn’t trust you (i.e., tells you who you MUST vote for), it’s no wonder no one shows up to vote on election day.
To some extent Mr. Black is certainly correct, one must not make the Bermuda Triangle mistake of thinking there is a single explanation for everything. Every election has been different, and for different reasons things have tended to break against Democrats. However my conversations with Democrats over the years about their candidates invariably come down to their estimations of who’s electable.
The problem is they trend towards the status quo so they tend to think that middlest candidates are electable. This produces mediocre dare I say “bland” candidates. It’s almost like Democrats are afraid to challenge people. Were it not for his superior organization and manipulation of the party process Franken would have lost the nomination to Ciresi, and Cerisi would have lost to Coleman. In this next round I hope they haven’t blown it again. My bet would’ve been on Rukavina, the guy stands out, has a wonderful populist appeal, a knack for memorable quotes- and he’d make a good governor. Failing that Think Rybak has certain energy. I think Kelliher is good, and I’ll vote for her, but I suspect she lacks the charisma to prevail in a three way race.
Again, the Democrats winning comes down to who bad the Republican candidate is rather than how talented the Democrat is. Unfortunately the Republicans went with Emmer, who unlike Seifert, doesn’t come across as an obvious jerk in most situations. If I had to guess, and I do, I’d say the Dems went with Kelliher because they thought Rukavina is too working class, and Rybak has wouldn’t play well in rural areas. This may be true but I think both of the R’s are talented enough politicians to overcome those challenges.
I guess the that’s the thing with Dems, you don’t have to predict who will win, you have to select a talented candidate, they don’t seem to get that. As for Dayton, I think his name and wealth actually work against him at this point. Frankly, I hate to say it but Dayton strikes me as emotionally unstable and I think it shows, I think he’s the biggest gamble. But what do I know, Mark Rosen the sports guy once got more votes as write-in than the guy I voted for. Although I must say in my defense, I never actually thought the guy I voted for would win.
Dayton (at this moment) polls higher than Kelliher. This would help make the point that MAK could be the //”Unelectable DFL nominees”//.
Will Emmer be affected by the anti-incumbent sentiment as well as his conservative credentials and his inability to unite the GOP party?
If so the //”IP influence”// could very well be more than marginal this go around. IP candidate Tom Horner could very well benefit from what could be considered a wide open race.
Are you referring to Dean Barkely in point 2, or did you mean to say 2006?
I hack on Eric Black in these comments, but credit where credit is due: this was a good post, and a thoughtful comment discussion.
One correction: in point #2, do you mean ‘2006’ rather than ‘2008’? That’s the guv year I think you are referring to.
I agree with Mark — an early primary would be better, and would probably now start to give the DFL an advantage over the GOP if they stuck w/their convention. I was a convention delegate, but with people running to the primary and shooting ourselves in the foot, I’d rather just see an early primary and let the masses speak and focus on the campaign.
I’ll contend with Paul on one point… I think Rybak had more rural support than MAK — he was close to MAK in the early going but way behind (2:1 in CD5, iirc) overall. His support was, if not rural, at least outside of Minneapolis in its strength. Rybak had a good chunk of very anti-Rybak people from Minneapolis, the people who knew him from his Mayorship, and a lot of them didn’t like him.
Good call, Eric.
While the answer is still ‘all of the above’, this is a factor that I hadn’t heard of before.
Why do Minnesota Democrats stay home in the mid-terms?
In my opinion, it’s not necessarily a rejection of the “mainstream” (that part which is publicly acknowledged) leftist agenda, although I’d certainly like to believe that was true.
It’s more the result of the fringe left of the Democrat party choosing to offer candidates with a bag full of highly visible behavioral, emotional, mental, moral or ethical deficiencies, singly or in any combination.
Al Franken would never have won a mid-term election; not in a million years.
And, since it appears highly likely that leftist voters will send Mark Dayton into the general election this year, we are virtually guaranteed another GOP victory.
I’ve been back in Minnesota for only one gubernatorial election, but I was disappointed in the endorsement of Margaret Anderson-Kelliher. The DFL is always playing it safe, endorsing the person they THINK other people will vote for instead of the person they really want.
Did the Republicans care that core DFLers are appalled by Emmer? No, because he was the candidate their party activists really wanted.
After eight years of far-right governorship from Pawlenty, the DFL needed to nominate a proud, forthright candidate from the Farmer-Labor wing of the DFL, someone who would institute bold corrective measures and restore “the good life in Minnesota” that I remember from the 1960s and ’70s.
But no–the powers that be were all thinking, “Who could we get who wouldn’t be threatening to the right-wingers?”
As an independent/moderate voter, I think #1 is far and away the biggest influence, and has a causal relationship with #2. If the DFL nominated better candidates, the IP wouldn’t attract as many voters (myself included). For instance, this year I was ready to back RT. But with the options whittled down to Dayton, Kelliher and Entenza, I’m leaning towards Horner.
Having said that, I like the theory about voter turnout. But it is heavily influenced by #1, candidate selection, as evidenced by the whomping Sen Klobuchar put on then-Rep Kennedy in an ‘off year’ election. I also notice that in 2006, Pawlenty was the only Republican to win statewide. If the voter turnout theory implies the party is generally a beneficiary, it seems that the party should benefit on the whole ballot, yet that is not fully accurate here.
I’m going to have to disagree with comment #2 about Franken and Ciresi. Franken did a great job organizing for the convention, but he was a weak general election candidate.
Franken had very high negatives; Prscilla Lord Faris was able to get 30% against him in the primary (and she didn’t even run a real campaign).
In the end, Franken barely eeked out a win in the midst of a huge Democrat surge. I think that pretty much anyone with “DFL” by their name could have beaten Coleman in ’08 and by a larger margin than Franken.
I don’t think at all that sending Dayton to the General will guarantee a GOP victory. Dayton has a lot of supporters. People remember how much he loves MN and how hard he has worked, over 34 years, for our state.
Eric wrote a thoughtful analysis, but I see some problems with the DFL’s problem being the timing.
First, there are other factors in each election. The other factors vary race by race and offer an alternate explanation, like the 1978 Minnesota Massacre Black alluded to, and Wellstone’s death.
How relevant are elections going back to the mid 1970’s? Some things have changed in terms of demographics, ideological divisions, partisanship, methods of campaigning, issues, and probably more not coming to the top of my head. So does an election in the 70’s tell us anything now?
Special elections are also low turnout yet look how well Democrats have been doing roughly the last five years. They have a strong winning percentage in low turnout elections, so I question whether that premise, probably true in prior decades, is still true.
If the timing is the problem, why don’t we see the same effect in congressional and legislative races? They aren’t statewide, but constitutional offices are, and we don’t see the effect there. Those are lower profile but that should make them also low turnout elections, yet the DFL seems to have the advantage.
Besides, midterms are lower turnout in all states, but other states aren’t having this same discussion.
It sounds like the ongoing disputes over the endorsement process. We want to blame it for the gubernatorial losses, but that’s taking governor is isolation. Looked at with other races, and how endorsed DFL caniddates are winning just about everything recently, governor starts to look like an anomaly.
I just don’t think voters trust us with the money.
What I look to, is the 2006 election, not as an election we lost, but as an election we nearly won. Mike Hatch did self destruct at the end, but he got closer to being elected than any other DFler has in a long time. Mike’s public image is as kind of a mean guy, willing to go his own way, not beholden to the DFL party establishment. Compare this to the 2002 election where we ran an extremely capable and widely respected insider candidate, Roger Moe, who nonetheless, didn’t have the slightest clue as to how to run a state run election. The question that comes to my mind is whether Margaret will turn out to be a Mike or a Roger. I have to say, right now, she is looking very Rogerish to me. She has time to change that, to establish her own identity, but not a lot of time.
And while I am on the subject here is another one of my pet peeves. For an entity with so little to show for it in terms of actually electing anybody, the DFL establishment spends an extraordinary time congratulating itself.
I was in Duluth on the convention floor for Margaret’s acceptance paragraph, and at that moment of anticipated triumph she couldn’t offer much more than saying that she made history. Well not yet, Margaret. And I sincerely hope the results of the Humphrey poll makes it clear that the endorsement of the DFL convention means little more than nothing, and that an electoral strategy built on gender is a sure loser.
“The DFL is always playing it safe, endorsing the person they THINK other people will vote for instead of the person they really want.”
Isn’t it so often the case in politics and in life that the choice perceived to be safe is often risky, and sometimes riskiest? What so many people fail to realize that a strategy not to lose, is something entirely different than a strategy to win.
I think another thing the Democrats suffer is that for most people, they look at the Democrat first and decide whether they can support them. If they can, they vote for him/her. If they can’t, they either waste their vote with the IP candidate or vote Republican. By voting Republican, you know the person, if elected, isn’t going to do too much – at least history tells us they never have. Then the voter hopes that in four years, the Democrats will find someone else. Nobody worries about whether you can trust a Republican. Or whether you like a Republican. It’s more a matter of knowing that the Democrats are going to try to do something. If you can’t trust the person, you can’t believe that what might get changed will be for the better and a safer bet is to put in a do-nothing.
If Black would have gone back far enough in history he would have seen that the majority party has had a larger dropoff in votes than the minority party in nonpresidential years. This bothered the then majority party Republicans in the 1950s who called it the “W” factor, meaning their vote totals made a W on a graph while the DFL held on to their voters better in the off yer elections. Thus Freeman became the first DFL governor in 1954 when he won with 607,000 votes, slightly less than his 1952 total of 624,000 votes. The Republican totals in those elections dropped from 785,000 to 539,000. Once the gubernatoral elections switched to four year terms (always in the off year) it made it more difficult for the majority party to get its marginally interested supporters to the polls for
races for governor.
“I think another thing the Democrats suffer is that for most people, they look at the Democrat first and decide whether they can support them.”
To the despair of my friends, I often quote Will Rogers, “I don’t belong to an organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”
As things currently stand being a Democrat means something than being a Republican. We are just a wider more loosely knit political entity. There are large numbers of Democrats who haven’t voted for a Democratic candidate in years.
I think we need to give the candidates who actually won some credit. Although I don’t like him and wish he was already gone, Pawlenty is a talented politician who knows how to present himself as the guy who you’d like to play hockey or grab a beer with. This is so regardless of his actual record. Ventura was able to capitalize on people’s dissatisfaction with both parties (in the year of Clinton impeachment) AND had the advantage of celebrity. Each time, the winner was a better match with enough of the electorate — and a better politician in the technical sense — than the DFL nominee.
I’m actually fairly hopeful about DFL chances this fall. Emmer is not Pawlenty — he lacks the polish or the ability to keep his mouth closed. He’s kind of this year’s Republican Mike Hatch — a ticking time bomb ready to go off. His kind of politics — appealing to some — is really not all that mainstream in the Minnesota tradition (as long as you think that tradition includes others than Michele Bachman). Kelliher can be a credible candidate if she allows herself to be herself — less the cautious dealmaker legislator and more the real Minnesotan that she is. Dayton would be the ultimate disaster for the DFL – he was not a successful senator and decided not to run, I think, because he saw (and others complained) that he just could not win a second term. He sounds even less stable today.
I also agree the DFL nominating process — which I participated in for the first time — gets in the way of truly innovative candidates. Would that we dispensed with the gap between convention and primary and got right to the actual nominee…
I agree with PaulU (#2):
Rukavina! That would have been a race! Even his enemies love him!
On EB’s topic, it does appear from his research that on-year off-year turnout is a factor.
However, it seems to me that there is also a voter thought that it’s better to have one party control the legislature and the other the governorship. We kinda like to see them spar: it makes it more likely we will not be so badly harmed.
Seeing what’s happening at the national level is likely to reinforce this predilection, I think.
Interesting and reasonable analysis.
“DFLers have won the Senate race in five out of seven of the elections that were held in presidential years and Republicans have won five of the seven elections held in gubernatorial election years”: please note, however, that while this may be a trend, the difference is not statistically significant (p=0.29).
//Franken had very high negatives; Prscilla Lord Faris
Prscilla who?
I have a real hard time giving Pawlenty any credit, he squeaked out wins in three way mashups. It’s the same problem democrats have with Clinton, the guy ran against complete duds who didn’t even have a lot of enthusiastic support in their own parties and they’re convinced he a genius. This is why Dems lost not just once but twice to the worst candidate in the history of the United States. Clinton is a talented politician in some ways, and he’s a really smart guy, but in the land of the blind…
The comment about Rybak and the MPLS dems just proves a point about Democratic stupidity. You may have a problem with him, but you’ll notice he keeps winning elections. Who else would look at a guy who they voted for and conclude they can’t vote for him?
If the DFL wants to win a state election, there is a simple solution: Democratic Candidate in Murtha’s old Pennsylvania district, Mark Critz, told Nero-Bama to stay HOME, and specifically repudiated OBAMACARE. He WON.
Americans have rejected Nero-Bama in FOUR straight elections. He is the most lying duplicitous politician of the Post War period.
THerefore, the COWARDLY Obama did not campaign ANYWHERE for the May 18, 2010 elections.
I sometimes think the Democrats are too polite, too reasonable. It’s utterly refreshing to hear someone like Rukavina or Dayton stand up to say he’s mad as hell and wants to fight back with all his strength.
If voters don’t yet understand the damage the no-tax philosophy has done, it is definitely time to teach them, let them know how it can be combatted, and who they need to elect to lead the fight.
Angry voters turn out. Ask Mr. Luntz, the PR guy who develops the language Republicans use to stir up anger, fear and resentment: words like government takeover, killing grandma, socialism, et cetera.
Let’s hear about rising property taxes, shortfalls created by the governor’s failure to raise revenue — shortfalls that mean people will lose access to essential services, that push ever more of the cost of higher ed onto students, that mean fewer jobs and more potholes. And, of course, Emmer is at least as anti-tax as Pawlenty and would repeat his every mean act.
“If voters don’t yet understand the damage the no-tax philosophy has done, it is definitely time to teach them…”
Sigh. Sometimes people just don’t know what’s good for them…thank goodness we have the Democrat party to set things straight.
Great post and some very good responses but..
Reason number one is KEY.
I have never voted for a Republican for national office or the legislature but I also have never voted for a Democrat for governor. Why? The DFL candidates (going back to my first voting experience in 1986) have all struck me as the wrong person for the job. (As have the Republicans post-Carlson, both parties – but especially the DFL – seem to think that their candidates “deserve” the governorship after their years of service in other areas. Hogwash. GIve me a thinker/doer who knows how to drive the bus not some party apparatchik.)
So, if any DFL strategists are paying attention, get Dayton to bow out now. Not that I think MAK is the right person either but Mark Dayton most definitely is not.
I haven’t missed a caucus since I was 18 in 1982 and I have gone to at least the senate district convention every cycle except one. I think the real problem in the endorsement process is the lack of participation. Except for 2004 and 2008, I’d have to go back to 1992 when there was more than a dozen people attending. These things turn into a sort of group think social club where people get the idea that they want to be on the winning side regardless of what they think of their candidate. In order to get through the whole walking sub-caucus thing, a campaign really has to have people on the floor to maximize their delegate selection. The Franken campaign’s effort on this in 2008 was the best I’d ever seen. Even though I was always a Franken backer, I was amazed at how inept the Ciresi campaign was.
I think MAK pulled off the endorsement primarily on her strength with the Super Delegates, who are all elected officials. This could be a real liability as it can give her campaign a true “insider” label. She also has to wear the failure of the DFL’s legislative agenda against Pawlenty. This will contribute to her inability to fire up the DFL base when it comes to turn out in the primary and the general election.
If Rybak had done better with union members, he might have pulled it off. Firing the city’s IBEW members after they rejected a contract made him a pariah for any informed union member.
I have seen Rukivina lose his temper way too often. I truly like the guy, but I think people were way too worried that he’d come off a little unbalanced.
John Marty is a great person, but it just doesn’t seem like he can overcome the image of his thumping by Arnie Carlson in 1994.
Matt Entenza also has true DFL principles, but the fact that after a huge expenditure, and a strong effort to get his name out there for the last 10 years, he’s not gaining any traction.
That leaves Dayton, who has a great name recognition, and a real human side to him that more his opponent’s try to beat down, the stronger he gets. The only time he lost a general election was his first senate campaign in 1982. Leaving the Senate during the peak of the Bush Administration is more about frustration than any political errors. His honesty about his personal issues stands up real well against Emmer who is the candidate who appears to have a pretty serious personality disorder.
So this could be pretty interesting, but my money is on Dayton.
Let’s go Dayton!!
Nice analysis and some good responses. Timing is (now that you point it out) obviously a factor in the DFL’s failure to win the gonvernor’s office over so many years. Candidates do matter, however, as does the presence of a third party candidate who can draw enough of the independent vote to give a plurality (or slight majority) win to the IR candidate.
As deeply opposed to Emmer as I find myself, my struggle this year will be whether to even consider a vote for Horner (with whom I agree in many ways but who I am convinced cannot win). I can support MAK, if she survives the primary. I cannot support either Dayton (whom I believe would be completely ineffectual) or Entenza (who failed to impress me when he held the House seat for my district – 64A – for 10 years).
Don’t forget that the “winner” in the three last governer’s races — Pawlenty twice and Venutra — got less than half of the votes. Franken and so would Tinklenberg would had respectible majorities but for the Independence Party’s siphoning votes. This year, it may be Tom Horner who blocks Emmer by taking the votes of traditional Minnesota Republicans.
Instant run-off voting would have almost certainly have produced different results in these elections. We can’t continue to let 40-45% of the voters control the outcome of elections. Who do we think we are? The U.S. Senate?