Yes. Minnesota has voted for a Republican presidential candidate 22 times, starting with Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and most recently with Richard Nixon in 1972. No Republican nominee has carried the state in the half-century since, and the resulting thirteen-election Democratic streak through 2024 is the longest active run for either party in any state.
The Last Republican Win: Nixon in 1972
Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election swept 49 of 50 states, and Minnesota was one of them. Nixon beat George McGovern in the state by about 5.5 points, with roughly 52% of the vote.1Minnesota Election Archives. 1972 Election Cycle2KTTC. How Minnesotans Voted in Past Presidential Elections It was actually the closest race in the country that year outside Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, the only two places McGovern carried. Minnesota’s electoral votes have gone to the Democratic nominee in every presidential election since.
Every Republican Presidential Win in Minnesota
Minnesota entered the Union in 1858 and cast its first presidential vote in 1860, giving Lincoln a 29-point victory. The Republican Party then carried the state in every election from 1860 through 1912, a run of fourteen straight wins.3Minnesota Election Archives. Election Cycles After Franklin Roosevelt broke that streak in 1932, Republicans won the state only three more times at the presidential level.4Minnesota Election Archives. 1932 Presidential Election Results
The complete list of Republican presidential winners in Minnesota:5Minnesota Secretary of State. Minnesota Votes
- 1860, 1864: Abraham Lincoln
- 1868, 1872: Ulysses S. Grant
- 1876: Rutherford B. Hayes
- 1880: James A. Garfield
- 1884: James G. Blaine
- 1888, 1892: Benjamin Harrison
- 1896, 1900: William McKinley
- 1904: Theodore Roosevelt
- 1908: William Howard Taft
- 1916: Charles Evans Hughes
- 1920: Warren G. Harding
- 1924: Calvin Coolidge
- 1928: Herbert Hoover
- 1952, 1956: Dwight D. Eisenhower
- 1972: Richard Nixon
One footnote on 1912: Theodore Roosevelt, running that year as a Progressive after breaking from the Republican Party, outpolled the official Republican nominee William Howard Taft in Minnesota, so the state technically went Progressive at the top of the ticket even as the broader Republican tradition continued its hold.5Minnesota Secretary of State. Minnesota Votes After Roosevelt’s 1932 victory, Minnesota settled into a competitive period, with Dwight Eisenhower winning in 1952 by more than 154,000 votes and again in 1956.6The American Presidency Project. 1952 Presidential Election Nixon’s 1972 win closed the Republican column.
Why No Republican Has Won Since 1972
The sustained Democratic lean traces largely to the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, and Ramsey County, which contains Saint Paul, together cast roughly a third of the statewide vote and gave Joe Biden a 44-point margin in 2020.7Center for Politics. How the Other Half Votes Adding Dakota, Anoka, and Washington counties, the combined metro Democratic margin grew from 19 points under Barack Obama in 2012 to 30 points under Biden in 2020.
Minnesota also has a larger share of white college-educated voters than its Rust Belt neighbors, roughly 35% of the electorate compared with 28 to 31% in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. That group broke heavily for Hillary Clinton in 2016, helping explain why Minnesota stayed blue the year Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin flipped.8Center for American Progress. The Path to 270 in 2020
The 82 counties outside the Twin Cities metro, meanwhile, have moved the other way, shifting about 13 points toward Republicans between 2012 and 2020.7Center for Politics. How the Other Half Votes Northern Minnesota in particular has moved firmly into the Republican column, while the metro has pulled further Democratic. The streak has held because the metro’s growth has so far outweighed the Republican gains elsewhere.
How Close Republicans Have Come
The streak has survived some narrow calls. The tightest came in 1984, when Ronald Reagan won 49 states and Minnesota was the lone holdout. Walter Mondale, the state’s own former senator and vice president, carried his home state by just 3,761 votes out of more than 2 million cast — a margin of 0.18 percentage points.9The American Presidency Project. 1984 Presidential Election10US Election Atlas. 1984 Minnesota Presidential Election Results Minnesota and the District of Columbia were the only places Mondale won.
Recent cycles have been closer than the streak suggests. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the state by only 1.52 points, 46.44% to Donald Trump’s 44.92%, a margin of about 44,765 votes.11Minnesota Secretary of State. 2016 General Election Results12CNN. 2020 Minnesota Presidential Results13Minnesota Secretary of State. 2024 General Election Results14Reuters. 2024 Minnesota Election Results Eighty-four of Minnesota’s 87 counties shifted right compared with 2020, and Trump flipped Blue Earth, Nicollet, Winona, and Carlton counties, all of which Biden had won.15MinnPost. County-Level Shifts in 2024 Presidential Election
Minnesota currently holds 10 electoral votes under the 2020 Census allocation.16U.S. National Archives. Electoral College Allocation The state has voted Republican before, 22 times in all, but the last time a Republican nominee’s name appeared on the winning side of a Minnesota presidential tally, Nixon was still in his first term.