POLITICS
Is Minnesota a swing state? List of the most important states in the 2024 presidential election
The November presidential elections are getting ever closer and thoughts, as well as strategies, turn to the crucial swing states across the nation.
Home to the Vikings, the Timberwolves, the Twins and the Wild, Minnesota has now been placed even more on the map, this time politically, as Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris added the current state governor Tim Walz to the ticket. The reasons for this are many and varied, but one of them is likely related to the fact that this is one of the battlegrounds that could be crucial to deciding who steps into the White House next January.
It’s fair to say that we could likely predict with some certainty how several of the US states will vote, pollsters agree that Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are the areas that will define the course of the election, with Minnesota also considered one, albeit it Democratically leaning. The Walz decision may have now taken that out of the discussion.
America’s Electoral College system allocates different importance to each state depending on size. Florida is the most prized of the swing states, contributing 29 votes of the 538 available across the country. Wyoming, by comparison, is worth just three. Minnesota has 10 electoral votes.
What is Minnesota’s voting record history?
Minnesota, situated at the western end of the Great Lakes, has a strong Democratic voting history, with Richard Nixon being the last Republican to win there in 1972. Although Democrats have frequently won, victories have been close, with no double-digit margins since 2008. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 win was by just 1.5 percentage points, but Biden expanded the margin to over 7 points in 2020.
Harris’ pick could certainly strengthen her appeal in the Midwest and energise the Democratic base.
How Harris is looking against Trump in swing states?
At the end of July, shortly after Joe Biden stepped aside in the race, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll showed that Harris had made notable gains against Republican Donald Trump in six out of seven pivotal swing states.
The online survey revealed that the current VP was leading the GOP candidate by 11 percentage points in Michigan and held a slim 2-point edge in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. In Pennsylvania, Trump is ahead of Harris by 4 points, and in North Carolina, he has a 2-point lead. The candidates were tied in Georgia.
Among the swing states, Wisconsin is the only one where Trump had reduced his deficit against Harris compared to Biden’s performance in a previous poll.