Allen Shen watches election results at the Minnesota GOP election night watch party on November 5, 2024. Credit: Dymanh Chhoun | Sahan Journal

Vice President Kamala Harris won Minnesota with 51.1% of the popular vote in last Tuesday’s presidential election, leading President-elect Donald Trump by 4.2 percentage points. 

Minnesota has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate consistently since the 1976 election. However, Minnesota, along with the majority of the nation, saw a red shift at the top of the 2024 ballot. In Minnesota, Trump decreased the vote margin from a 7.1 percentage point Democratic lead in 2020 to 4.2 points. This is the closest vote margin the Republican party has seen in Minnesota since 2016.

Trump also successfully flipped four counties from blue to red on Minnesota’s map. Blue Earth County, Carlton County, Nicollet County and Winona County – where President Joe Biden won in 2020 – voted Republican in the presidential race this year. 

Almost all Minnesota counties shifted more Republican in the 2024 presidential election than in 2020. In addition, Trump made sizable gains in counties where Harris took the lead. For instance, Ramsey County voters voted 2.24 points more Republican than in the 2020 election. Only two out of nine counties that voted blue saw slight increases – both under one percentage point – in the Democratic lead.

Here’s an interactive map showing how counties swung Republican in this election.

What is an electoral swing and how to calculate it?

An electoral swing shows the extent of change in voter support from one election to another, expressed as a positive or negative percentage point. It is calculated by taking the sum of the change in vote share of both parties, then dividing by two.

Swing = (2024 Dem. vote share - 2020 Dem. vote share) + (2024 Rep. vote share - 2020 Rep. vote share) / 2

Since the presidential race includes more than two parties on the ballot, both parties can simultaneously make gains in vote share in an electoral district. 

In the interactive map shown above, the color of the arrows represents the party that made more gains in voter support compared to 2020. The size of the arrows shows how much the support for the Republican or Democratic candidate shifted from 2020 to 2024.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to show that 2016 was the year prior to 2024 with the closest presidential vote margin in Minnesota.

Cynthia Tu is the data reporter and news technology specialist at Sahan Journal. She analyzes public datasets, uncovers hidden patterns and trends in numbers, and tells stories with compelling data visualizations....