WASHINGTON — While it seemed like President Biden and former President Trump easily won their respective party’s primaries in Minnesota last week, the results also spell trouble in the state for both candidates for the White House.
Biden won a little more than 70% of the Democratic vote in the state, while Trump won a little more than 69% of the support of GOP primary voters.
“There were about 30% of the voters who said ‘I’m not thrilled with the party’s nominee. Each should have gotten 90%,” said David Schultz, political science professor at Hamline University.
With the results of Tuesday’s primaries in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington, both Biden and Trump clinched the delegates they needed to clinch their party’s nomination and send them to a rematch.
But their campaigns will likely pay much more attention to Minnesota than they did in 2020.
Last week, the 19% of Democrats in the state who joined a protest against Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war and voted for “uncommitted” indicated an erosion of support for the president, and it’s unclear how many of these Democrats will vote for him in November.
The nearly 8% who voted for Rep. Dean Phillips, D-3rd District, and the votes for other Democratic candidates also pose a problem for Biden.
Meanwhile the nearly 29% who voted for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley showed there are cracks in support for Trump.
A November MinnPost/Embold research poll showed Biden was virtually tied with Trump among Minnesota voters. Respondents favored Biden 45% to 42% over Trump, but that was within the poll’s 2.6% margin of error.
Since then, other polls have also shown the race will be close in Minnesota.
Biden won Minnesota by more than 7 percentage points in 2020. Yet the poll’s results, which were released before the “uncommitted” protest was organized, means the Biden campaign cannot take the state for granted.
And Trump said he’s going to give Minnesota “a big shot” this year. That means the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee will likely have to spend resources in Minnesota they did not think they had to deploy.
“One dollar spent here is one less dollar spent in Michigan or Wisconsin,” Schultz said, referring to the neighboring Midwestern states that are considered tossups and key to any chance of Biden winning in November.
Biden can’t afford to lose Minnesota, either, so there will be a rush of visits and campaign ads aired in the state, Schultz said.
“We’re going to see some visits because Democrats are going to have to defend this space,” Schultz said.
The election results showed both Biden and Haley had the strongest support in urban/suburban counties like Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis counties while Trump dominated the state’s rural areas.
The real swing voters
While Biden was deployed to the battleground states — New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — after last week’s State of the Union speech, Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a campaign stop in the Twin Cities on Thursday, March 14.
In an attempt to motivate DFL voters, Harris will promote Biden’s defense of abortion rights and continue a successful Democratic campaign that paints the GOP as anti-women’s rights. The Biden campaign knows it needs to rally DFLers.
Besides the protest votes and votes for other candidates, there was another sign in the primary election results that Minnesota’s Democratic voters are disaffected.
“Trump got more votes than all the Democrats last week and that should be a concern for the party regarding the motivation of Democrats to vote versus Republicans to vote,” Schultz said.
Trump received 232,846 votes in Tuesday’s primaries while Democratic candidates received a total of 198,367.
Haley and Phillips each quit their campaigns after last week’s Super Tuesday’s results. Most of Phillips’ voters — but not all — are expected to vote for Biden in November. And most of Haley’s — again, not all — are expected to vote for Trump.
Meanwhile, many, if not most, of the Democrats who chose “uncommitted” last week are expected to support Biden in November. But there are still progressives, young voters and heretofore loyal Democrats in Muslim communities who may still resent Biden’s refusal to call for a permanent cease fire or pressure Israel to stop its bombing campaign of Gaza.
To Richard Benedetto, an expert on presidential elections at American University in Washington, D.C., the key to which candidate wins Minnesota in November may not have even cast a vote in the primaries last week.
They are the true independents, who don’t lean toward either party, are little concerned about politics and rarely participate in primary elections. “Independents decide elections. They are the real swing voters,” he said.
In any case, Schultz said “both candidates need to work” to win Minnesota.
“As (former Speaker of the House) Tip O’Neill said, ‘never take a vote for granted and ask for every vote.’”
Ana Radelat
Ana Radelat is MinnPost’s Washington, D.C. correspondent. You can reach her at aradelat@minnpost.com or follow her on Twitter at @radelat.
