Is Minnesota Actually In Play?

Per Survey USA's latest release, President Obama's lead has been halved, down to just 46-40 over Mitt Romney.

So Mitt can carry the one state that Reagan lost in 1984?

No.

Circumstances may change, but the "Minnesota moderate" bloc is a hard nut to crack and gives a good cushion to the President. However, there is one finding from the poll that is very, very telling about the remaining Great Lakes states.

There is only one region per this poll that goes to Romney: northeastern Minnesota. By a ten point margin.

Now, some may not be surprised by this, because of Craavack's victory over Oberstar in 2010. But if you look at the history of the state Presidential election returns, this is one of those BFD's- the heavily blue collar, unionized part of the state, which went strongly for Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, Mondale, Carter, McGovern, Humphrey, Johnson, Kennedy, Stevenson, etc is the only region in their poll going for Romney. Their regional sample isn't a fluke- when asked about the Senate race the regions voters favor the Democrat by a twenty-two point margin, like it almost always has gone.

The scope of just how Democrat-loyal this region has been is confirmed when looking at the election maps year to year (David Leip sticks with the old blue-R red-D from pre-2000, so inverse them in your head for the full effect).

With similar findings in the blue collar regions of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, we are seeing a stark political shift in the voting patterns of these long-long-long time loyal Democratic voters. Romney, without spending much of anything in the state, enjoys a dark blue region swinging 32 points in his favor. If Romney actively targets these same voters region-wide, we are talking about flipping holdouts Nixon and Reagan failed to in their landslide re-elections. We are talking about taking a majority of Great Lakes states for the first time since the 1980s.

We are talking about Obama losing, big.

posted by CAC at 02:20 PM

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