The above depicts Cook Political Report's most recent "rating changes" in this year's roster of US House races. Of the twelve, eleven move in the Democrats' direction, and there is some local interest since two of the twelve are here in Minnesota.
Our first congressional district runs along the Iowa border from Wisconsin to South Dakota. It was represented for years by Tim Walz, who in 2018 retired to run for governor. No doubt there were some career calculations involved in Walz's decision: his reelection margins in the first district kept shrinking, and indeed a Republican, Jim Hagedorn, won the open seat in 2018 even as Democrats were gaining 40 seats from coast to coast. The district is older, white, and rural—just the kind of place that has been getting more and more Republican. In 2016, Trump carried the district by fifteen points and Walz by 50.4 to 49.6 over Hagedorn, who then won the race for the open seat two years later. Cook moves Hagedorn's reelection race from "lean Republican" to "tossup."
The second congressional district is suburban and exurban territory to the south of Minneapolis/St. Paul: Burnsville, Eagan, Apple Valley, Lakeville, Farmington, and, at its southern extremity, Northfield. When the rural first district went for Hagedorn in 2018, the suburban second district gave the boot to radio talker Jason Lewis (who's now the Republicans' challenger to Tina Smith in our US Senate race) and elected Democrat Angie Craig. Cook moves Craig's reelection race from "lean Democrat" to "likely Democrat."
Trump was supposedly targeting Minnesota—he lost here by less than two percent of the vote in 2016—but neither he nor Pence has visited for awhile and I haven't seen a Trump TV ad in weeks. Maybe I watch the wrong channels, or they can't transmit their ads into the People's Republic of South Minneapolis. But Cook's analysis of these congressional races suggests another possibility: Trump has no chance in Minnesota and his campaign knows it. I'm a little suspicious of this conclusion, because I want it to be true, but, seriously, if Trump was going to have a chance here then Craig's race, not Hagedorn's, would be the tight one. The incumbent Republican congressman is struggling to be reelected in a district Trump carried by 15 points—unless he's been having an affair with a farm animal, that's a bad sign for your side, MAGA bros. And it seems broadly consistent with other measurements of public opinion. Minnesota's first congressional district is culturally and demographically indistinguishable from much of Iowa, where in 2016 Trump won by 9.4 percent. Of the eight most recent polls of Iowa listed at FiveThirtyEight's 2020 Election Forecast, Biden leads in four, Trump in one, and the other three show a dead heat. I don't know when Trump was last in Minnesota but he had a rally in Des Moines last week.
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