As the filing deadline recently passed for Minnesota state legislative candidates, I thought it would make sense to update my ratings for the Minnesota State Senate. (The State House update will be in a later post.)
As with the case of my Iowa updates, a few of these rating changes come from actual developments (such as incumbents not running for reelection or third party candidate filings), while others are entirely due to changes in my own opinions. In general, I try to cover any important developments in competitive districts, even if my ratings haven’t changed.
Republican Held Senate Seats:
SD 11: Toss Up → Lean R
SD 20: Lean R → Likely R
SD 28: Toss Up → Lean R
SD 34: Toss Up → Lean R
SD 35: Likely R → Safe R
SD 38: Toss Up → Lean R
SD 39: Toss Up → Lean R
SD 44: Toss Up → Likely D
Democratic Held Senate Seats:
SD 19: Likely D → Safe D
SD 48: Safe D → Likely D
I’ll start with the Republican held state senate districts. The Democrats odds have improved in SD 44, partially because the current incumbent, Paul Anderson, is not running for reelection. Even before Anderson announced his retirement, this seemed like the best pick-up opportunity for the Dems given that Anderson barely won in 2016 and Hillary Clinton easily carried it by 18 points. With no Republican incumbent, the Dems should be heavily favored to flip it. (Arguably, classifying this district a toss-up in my original ratings was too generous to the Republicans.)
The remaining seven rating changes in the Republican held districts are all rightward shifts (more favorable to Republicans.) In two of these districts (SD 20 and SD 28) the change is due to the presence of a third party candidate. In SD 20, a third-party marijuana legalization candidate has filed. SD 20 district has heavily trended to the right recently, with Republicans flipping the seat in 2016. Clinton lost the district by double digits, and while Tim Walz and Tina Smith did a lot better here in 2018, they still both failed to carry it despite winning statewide by double digits. Given that presence of the third-party candidate will likely siphon off the Democratic vote, I think it makes sense to move this district to “Likely R” given the fundamentals of the district. Two different third-party marijuana legalization candidates have also filed in SD 5, which is of a similar profile to SD 20. However, the Democrats have recruited a strong candidate, so I am keeping SD 5 as Lean R.
In the case of SD 28, as I wrote in my original assessment, it was likely a stretch to call it a toss-up to begin with and now with a Green Party candidate running as well, I’m giving the edge to the Republican incumbent, Jeremy Miller. In previous elections Miller has received a large amount of cross-over support (especially in 2016). However, given how much polarization the electorate has become since 2016, I’d expect the state senate race here to be quite a bit closer this cycle than it was in 2016.
It is also worthwhile to point out that SD 14 also has a third-party candidate running (from one of the marijuana legalizations parties). My rating hasn’t changed for this district. The district still remains a toss-up, as the Democrats do have a fairly strong candidate running this cycle, Aric Putnam, who ran in 2018 for HD 14A (the more conservative half of SD 14) and lost by about just 4 points. However, if pressed I would probably give the Republicans a slight edge for the district now (if there were no third-party candidates running I would probably give the Dems a slight edge.)
The rating changes for the other five districts are entirely due to changes in my own assessment. While SD 34, SD 38, and SD 39 have more or less trended towards the Democrats, they are still somewhat Republican leaning and the Republicans won the combined state house vote in all three of these districts by at least 3 points in 2018. “Lean R” seems more reasonable than toss-up.
I’m now also giving the Republicans the edge in SD 11 as well. This district flipped to the Republicans in a special election held in 2019, and while I generally don’t take that much stock into special election results, the trends in this district clearly favor the Republicans (the district went from supporting Obama by double digits to supporting Trump by double digits). Given that Walz and Smith just narrowly carried the district, Trump will likely carry the district again in 2020, unless he loses Minnesota statewide by double digits.
The final district, SD 35, has been moved from “Likely R” to “Safe R”, as my original reasoning (Walz and Smith coming within single digits) probably isn’t enough to warrant the district as potentially competitive.
With regards to the Democrat held seats, there is one leftward rating change, and one rightward change. Both of these ratings changes are entirely due to changes in my own assessments and not due to new developments.
SD 19 is now “Safe D”. There really is no other evidence of the district being competitive outside of the fact that Clinton just narrowly carried the district in 2016.
(I realize a similar argument could be made for SD 3 and SD 6, both of which are safer for Dems down-ballot, and have incumbents who won by over 20 points in 2016. However, both of these districts have more drastically trended rightwards recently, and Trump actually narrowly carried the latter, so I still think they are worth keeping an eye on.)
SD 48, on the other hand, has been moved from “Safe D” to “Likely D.” This seat actually flipped to the Dems in 2016, with the then Republican incumbent being defeated. This seat has heavily trended towards the Democrats recently, having only narrowly voted for Obama by less than a percentage point in 2012 and then voting for Clinton by double digits. The fact that that the Dems flipped this district at all in 2016 is why I initially classified it as “Safe D.” However, given the other districts I have as “Likely D” and the fact that the district has been historically competitive, I realize “Likely D” probably makes more sense.
It should also be noted that a third-party candidate (again, marijuana legalization) has filed in SD 27. I am not changing the rating here, as classifying the district as a toss-up in my original ratings (the Dem incumbent won by a fairly decent margin in 2016), was probably generous to the Republicans. This district has trended fairly heavily towards the Republicans, similar to SD 11, and Biden will probably have to win MN statewide by double digits to carry the district. One concern for the Democrats in SD 27 (which I didn’t address in my original post) is that Tim Walz did several points worse here in 2018 than he did in 2016 despite doing slightly better districtwide in 2018 than he did in 2016. (By districtwide, I am referring to Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, which Walz represented until 2018.) Specifically, Walz carried SD 27 by about 9 points in 2016 (similar to the the 2016 state senate race in the district), but only carried SD 27 by about 3 points in 2018.
Overall my assessment for control of the chamber is still a Toss Up. I should note that ratings rely way more on the 2018 results than the actual 2016 MN State Senate races given how much more polarized the MN Electorate was in 2018 than 2016 in general.
Thanks to Aaron Booth (who posted his own assessment of both MN chambers, and has posted several tweets about various MN districts which were useful.) I also used Daily Kos Elections (for the 2012/2016 presidential election results) and Ballotpedia as resources.