The Fight For Minnesota

States To Watch In '08: McCain Will Try To Snap The State's Blue Streak

(CBS)  Republicans generally have relied heavily on support from white voters, and white men in particular, as a big part of their winning Presidential elections formula. In Minnesota, though, John McCain finds a white electorate (African Americans were just 3% in 2004) that is more likely to support Democratic presidential candidates in than many other states: John Kerry won 50% of whites here, 9 points higher than nationwide, and
49% of white men specifically, a full 12% better than he did nationwide. Meeting those benchmarks may be the key tests for Obama, and a challenge for McCain.

Kerry also exceeded his national figures with rural voters (with whom Republicans typically do very well) with 46%. Whether or not Obama can duplicate that might determine whether or not he holds the state.

Up in Minnesota’s culturally conservative Iron Range environs - exemplified by Duluth in St. Louis County - the heavily blue-collar workforce gave Kerry strong support and strong turnout. Despite slow growth in the voting age population (4,506 between 2000 and 2004) almost 10,000 additional voters turned out in St. Louis County in 2004 as compared to 2000, as the county gave Kerry two-thirds of its votes and 8,000 more tallies toward his state totals than it gave to Gore in 2000. Still, the impact of the region is somewhat lessened by the fact that it is simply not booming like the suburbs.

Statewide, union households will be a critical part of the equation, though, and Obama may benefit from the cohesiveness of their vote, which favored Kerry by a wide 61%-38% margin. 30% of all voters in Minnesota came from households where at least one voter is a union member.

Finally, there is the wild-card of the youth vote - a group expected to be for Obama that could put a damper on McCain’s chances to win here. Kerry won 57% of 18-29 year-olds and Obama will aim at least to hit 60% in 2008. Turnout is always a little more uncertain with this age group - but Minnesota’s same-day registration rules make it easy for them to show up at the polls.

McCain’s Challenge, Part 2: Stay Close in The Cities

In 2004 John Kerry relied heavily not only on winning the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul by solid margins - as Democratic candidates have traditionally done -- but he also benefitted from heavy turnout in those places, helping him neutralize Bush’s edge in the suburbs.

If McCain is to win the state he’ll need to do better than Bush in the Twin Cities, staying closer to Obama so that any margins McCain takes from the suburbs won’t be offset.

Kerry won a surprisingly hefty majority in Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, taking 60% of the major party vote and ringing up a 129,000 margin over Bush. That was a big improvement over the 82,000-vote edge Gore had four years earlier. For McCain, success at staying close might mean approaching Pawlenty’s 45 percent here rather than Bush’s 40%.

Kerry's Hennepin success was augmented by an astonishing 70,000-vote increase in total turnout - this, in an area where voting age population had increased by only 18,375 between 2000 and 2004. Kerry's margin in Hennepin, and also in Ramsey County (the city of St. Paul), where he won by 75,000 votes as compared to Gore's 51,000, enabled the Democrats to hold the state.

The good news for McCain is that while Hennepin has around 40,000 more voters today than it did in 2004, it isn’t substantially larger as a percentage of the state, because all the suburban growth offsets its influence. It is 23% of the state today as it was in 2004. Ramsey (St. Paul) is 10% today as it was in 2004.

All of which leads back to those three essential counties outside the Twin Cities. On September 4th all eyes will be on the action downtown in St. Paul’s Xcel Center. But on November 4th a lot of the action in Minnesota moves - fittingly, perhaps - out to the suburbs.

[time2mov8]

Why isn''t the National News covering all the protesting, and arrests?

http://the-uptake.groups.theuptake.org/en/videogalleryView/id/695/

[hacbs1]

Perhaps, McCain/Palin ticket is not helping Minnesota into red. We the Obama/Biden supporters should not make any comment on Palin, people will learn themselves in response to news coming surrounding the convention.

[vincan-2009]

Hopefully the states that went for Bush, at least some of them, will realize what a mistake they made. They will not support another republican to continue the corruption of America and spend endlessly on war mongering.