Minnesota extends blue streak for 13th consecutive presidential election
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota section of the "blue wall" held firm on Election Day 2024, marking the 13th straight presidential race where the Democratic candidate won the state — and the seventh time that candidate lost.
CBS News projects Vice President Kamala Harris as the winner in Minnesota, where she has nearly 138,000 more votes than President-elect Donald Trump as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State's Office.
While the former president is projected to have lost in Minnesota by more than 4 percentage points, Trump narrowed his 2020 election gap in the state, when he lost to President Biden by more than 233,000 votes.
Trump came his closest to a possible victory in Minnesota in 2016 when he lost to Hillary Clinton by just 44,765 votes and about 1.5 percentage points.
Trump's 2016 defeat in Minnesota was not without its benefit for Republicans. He was able to flip dependably blue rural counties that voted for President Barack Obama in 2012. Once strongholds for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), they've remained red since.
The last Republican presidential candidate to win Minnesota was Richard Nixon in 1972. He beat Democrat George McGovern by about 96,000 votes.
The closest presidential race in Minnesota history was the 1916 match-up of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Republican Charles Evans Hughes, where runner-up Hughes won the state by just 392 votes.
Second to that was the 1984 race between Republican Ronald Reagan and Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale, with Reagan winning by just 3,761.
Minnesota was the only state to elect Mondale, who had served several terms as one of Minnesota's U.S. senators before being elected as President Jimmy Carter's VP in 1976.
While Minnesota and Illinois held the line for "blue wall" Midwestern states this election, delivering a combined 29 electoral college votes for Harris, CBS News projects Michigan and Wisconsin went red with a total of 25 votes.
Democrats are also projected to lose the 19 electoral college votes from blue-waller Pennsylvania, one of the most coveted swing states.
