When I invented the portmanteau “Minnewisowa” (Minnesota-Wisconsin-Iowa) in a 2004 op ed in The Washington Times, I did not anticipate the kind of unconventional politics which would erupt in the U.S. only 20 years later.
But my premise that the demographic similarities of these three adjacent midwestern states meant they would vote alike in a presidential election, and thus that they formed a de facto electoral superstate, held up in 2008 and 2012, and almost so in 2016 and 2020.
In the probable rematch of Donald Trump and Joe Biden this November, Minnewisowa now seems likely to vote its 26 electoral votes as a key bloc in the presidential election and serve as a bellwether for the overall outcome.
Because it does not have a super-large urban center, Iowa has remained consistently conservative and increasingly Republican, casting its six electoral votes for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Polls indicate the former president will carry it again, probably by double digits.
Mr. Trump carried Wisconsin by a small margin in 2016, and Mr. Biden carried it by a small margin in 2020. In 2024, Trump has consistently led Biden by a few points in polls, and is expected to win the state by a small margin. Unlike Iowa, Wisconsin has a very large urban metro area that has become increasingly liberal-progressive and offsets the rural and outstate Republican vote. This state also has a very competitive U.S. Senate race this cycle in which incumbent Democrat Senator Tammy Baldwin has a small lead within the margin of error over her GOP challenger Eric Hovde.
The surprise in this region in 2024 may be Minnesota, which has voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1972. Mr. Trump almost won this state in 2016, but in the margin in 2020 was not especially close. However, in recent polls, the former president has a narrow lead over Biden. If Trump does win Minnesota’s 10 electoral votes this year, Minnewisowa will cast a combined 26 electoral votes for him, and would likely be a bellwether for a landslide Trump Electoral College victory.
Like Wisconsin, Minnesota has a very large urban center in the twin cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis — which in recent years has voted increasingly to the progressive left. This has more than compensated for a major shift of working-class voters in northeast Minnesota from liberal left to the conservative right.
The key to Donald Trump’s resurgent voter strength in Minnesota is much the same as it is throughout the several battleground states elsewhere in the U.S. – conservative voter enthusiasm to end the current “progressive” policies of the Biden administration, including climate control regulations, wokeism, open borders, higher taxes, and weakening national defense.
The energy motivating Democrats, on the other hand, seems primarily to come from antipathy to Trump and the abortion issue. But, led by Trump, most Republican candidates are working to craft more effective messaging strategies on the latter, since the U.S. Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade and sent the issue back to the individual states.
While the New York criminal trial pleased die-hard anti-Trumpers, the trial and its verdicts may have, in fact, helped Trump politically, and most recently provoked so many contributions to the former president’s campaign that it quickly caught up and exceeded the Biden campaign’s initial huge campaign finance lead.
At a recent Minnesota Lincoln-Reagan dinner, a Trump appearance wiped out in a single night the party’s chronic financial deficit, and electrified a crowd of 1,400 state grass roots Republicans who had suffered years of statewide defeat.
November’s Election Day is still four months away. The first Trump-Biden debate has yet to occur, and at least two of Minnewisowa’s component states are too close to call, but if present trends continue, the midwestern superstate will be a bellwether once more to a major change in America’s political direction.
Barry Casselman is a writer for AMAC Newsline.
