Why Trump keeps dreaming he can flip Minnesota
Donald Trump has fixated on the idea he can expand the map in a general election that’s likely to be decided in six swing states. He has touted his rally attendance in New Jersey as evidence that he could flip the deep-blue stronghold. And he has mused about winning Virginia.
But it’s Minnesota, of all places, where Trump has been obsessed for years with leveling the Democratic Blue Wall, and where Trump has zeroed in on flipping the Upper Midwestern state. He nearly won there in 2016, coming within 2 points of Hillary Clinton, the closest of any GOP nominee since Richard Nixon. And he promised to win it in 2020 — “I lose Minnesota,” he said that year, “I’m never coming back.”
He lost. But on Friday night, Trump will come back, headlining the Minnesota GOP’s Lincoln Reagan Dinner in St. Paul. And once again, he and his allies are boasting that the Democratic-heavy state is in play.
Senior Trump advisers presented new polling data to top donors earlier this month, showing slide decks inside the Four Seasons Palm Beach that argued Minnesota and Virginia were the top two states where Trump could expand the map this November.
During the presentation, campaign advisers Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles and pollster Tony Fabrizio flashed numbers on screen from another Trump pollster, John McLaughlin, showing President Joe Biden and Trump tied at 40 percent in Minnesota, and Biden up 3 percentage points in Virginia. Without independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an option, Trump was up 5 points in Minnesota and Biden up 1 point in Virginia, the advisers told donors.
Even Republicans in Minnesota are skeptical.
“Minnesota is a blue state,” said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. “On a good day for Republicans, it can be a little bit of Vikings purple.”
But neither are they without hope. Trump is running ahead of Biden in swing state general election polls, and if Trump can replicate his 2016 performance, when he lost the state by fewer than 45,000 votes, he could at least put a scare into Democrats.
“Minnesota remains an uphill climb for any statewide Republican candidate, but President Trump has a real shot here,” former Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty told POLITICO. He added: “Relative levels of voter turnout and President Trump’s performance in the suburbs will decide the election here.”
Trump made Minnesota a prime target of his during the 2020 election. Between him and then-Vice President Mike Pence, the campaign visited the state seven times in the last three months of the race. But he lost Minnesota by 7 points. And in the years since, it has looked even bleaker for Republicans there. It’s now a trifecta state, where Democrats control the governor’s office, and both state legislative bodies.
“The former president says a lot of things that aren’t true,” Democratic Gov. Tim Walz told POLITICO. “Look, we’re a state of hockey. We know what a hat trick is: He was beaten in ‘16. He was beaten in ‘20. And he’ll lose in 2024. The Republican Party out here has about $50 in the bank. There is no ground game out here. I just don’t see how being in court every day — and then saying you’re going to win Minnesota — makes that happen.”
The Trump campaign did not provide information on its strategy in Minnesota and Virginia, the other state it has highlighted as flippable. In a statement to POLITICO, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump is “on offense with a winning message,” while Biden’s campaign “should be terrified.”
“Joe Biden is so weak, and Democrats are in such disarray, that not only is President Trump winning every traditional battleground state, but longtime blue states such as Minnesota, Virginia, and New Jersey are now in play,” Leavitt said.
If Democrats are laughing Trump off in New Jersey, they’re hardly terrified in Minnesota or Virginia, either. In Minnesota, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith said, “Trump is grasping at straws” when he says the state is winnable.
“Trump said the same thing in 2020,” she said.
And in Virginia, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who is up for reelection this year, said he “doesn’t see the math working out” for Trump in the state, where slightly more than a third of Republican primary voters supported Haley over him on Super Tuesday.
“But he’s got resources,” Kaine said. “So if he says he’s gonna, then I gotta take that very seriously.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) deadpanned that Trump should pour his resources into a longshot effort in Virginia. But he conceded that’s easier to say when he’s not the one up for reelection.
Despite Trump’s appearance in Minnesota on Friday and declaration in a March interview with KNSI Radio that the state is “not, like, in my opinion, that blue,” how seriously his campaign will take Minnesota is unclear. Gregg Peppin, a longtime Minnesota Republican strategist, said he has seen no evidence of a Trump operation on the ground yet in Minnesota, and noted that the campaign had a fairly robust presence in the state during the last presidential race.
“If they start to invest in the state like they did in 2020, that will be a telltale sign that they’ve got some numbers that show that Minnesota really is indeed in play,” Peppin said. “At this point, I think that it’s more rhetorical than it is strategic.”
No Republican presidential candidate has won the state since 1972. Republicans running statewide in Minnesota haven’t done so since 2006, when Pawlenty won. Biden campaign officials have scoffed at the idea that Trump could win in either Virginia or Minnesota. And while the Trump campaign contends that both states are in play, his pollster acknowledges they still have their work cut out for them there.
“We’re still a little behind, or at best even” in those states, McLaughlin said.
However, he said, with Trump’s promising outlook in national polling, “that’s going to put Minnesota and Virginia in play. It’s going to put other states in play too.”
Trump will have some convincing to do, first — starting with Republicans on the ground in Minnesota.
Peppin himself was bullish on the idea of Minnesota being in play for Trump in 2020. But after his poor results in that election, he said, it’s hard to get too excited this time around.
“If I were advising them, I would advise they either double down on an existing swing state — maybe Wisconsin or Michigan — or expand the map elsewhere,” he said. “It pains me to say that, but at this stage it’s an uphill climb.”