Minnesota's electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections 1860-2020

Minnesota has taken part in all U.S. presidential elections since 1860, and has voted for the nationwide winner in thirty of these 41 elections, giving a success rate of 73 percent. Minnesota has traditionally voted for the more liberal of the major party nominees in each election, voting almost-exclusively Republican between 1860 and 1928, and then voting almost exclusively Democrat since 1932. The only times where it did not vote in this trend was in the 1912 election, where it voted for former President Theodore Roosevelt of the Progressive Party; in both of Eisenhower's landslide victories in the 1950s, and Richard Nixon's re-election victory in 1972. In the 2004 election in Minnesota, it is assumed that one elector accidentally cast their ballot for John Kerry's running mate, John Edwards; as the ballots were cast secretly and nobody has claimed responsibility for the incident, the exact details remain unclear. No U.S. president has ever been born in or resided in Minnesota upon taking office, although both Democratic nominees in the 1968 and 1980 elections, had represented Minnesota in the Senate before running for president.

Swing state?

Minnesota has voted for the Democratic nominee in every election since 1976, although it has been considered a swing state for much of this time, and the results have been relatively close on a number of occasions. For example, in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton won the state with just a 1.5 percent larger share of the popular vote, and many of the other elections since the 1970s have been split by less than five percent of the vote. In terms of the most recent election, Joe Biden carried Minnesota with over seven percent of the popular vote.

Electoral votes

After growing from just four votes to twelve in its first five decades of voting; the past century has seen Minnesota's allocation of electoral votes gradually fall, from twelve votes in 1928 to just ten votes since 1964. Despite healthy population growth, Minnesota's population is not increasing at the same rate as many other states, particularly along the south, therefore this allocation is expected to drop to just nine votes in the 2024 election.