Minnesota ranked first in voter turnout in the November election. Even more impressive, this makes eight of the last nine elections (counting presidential and midterm) in which we have done so.
That's according to an analysis by an outfit called Nonprofit Vote, which exists to coordinate activity by nonprofit organizations related to voter turnout. It turns out (not too surprisingly) that two factors correlate most powerfully with high turnout: states that allow Election Day registration had average turnout rates 12 points higher than states that do not; and the top 10 "swing" states in the presidential election had turnout rates seven percentage points higher than the 40 non-swing states.
Minnesota was not a top 10 swing state and has not been in any recent election. And, although we do have Election Day registration, other factors about the state's population and ethos obviously contribute to our stellar turnout figures going back at least nine cycles.
Nonprofit Vote also analyzed just how much additional attention campaigns pay to swing states. They found:
• 96% of the spending on television ads between April 11th and November 6th by presidential campaigns and allied groups went to ten battleground states.
• Nearly six times as much ad money was spent in Florida alone than was spent in the 40 non-swing states and DC.
• 99% of campaigns stops by the presidential or vice presidential candidates were in these states.
Thank you, Electoral College system.
The full report from Nonprofit Vote is a pdf that can be downloaded from this link.
Meanwhile, the folks at Gallup used the data from their daily tracking poll during the election season to rank the states according to their blueness or redness. They based the rankings entirely on the portion of respondents who said they considered themselves Democrats (or Dem leaners) versus Republicans (or leaners).
In Minnesota, 48.6 percent self-identified as Dems or leaners versus 37.3 for Repubs. That gap of 10.3 percentage points was enough to get us colored deep blue on the map that Gallup ranof the bluest and reddest states, but just barely. Minnesota ranked 13th in blueness, and was the least blue of the deep blue states.
The District of Columbia with a mind-blowing 64 point gap between Dem and Repub identifiers would be -- by far -- the bluest state, if it was a state. Of actual states, Hawaii won the blueness derby with a 24 point gap, followed closely by Maryland (23 points), Rhode Island (23) and New York (22).
The reddest states were Utah (37 percentage-point-gap in favor of Repub self-identifiers), Wyoming (30) and Idaho (28). The figures for every state (and the color-coded map) are here.
The fact that all 10 of the reddest states are relatively small in population, while the 10 bluest includes some big states (New York, Illinois, Mass.) would be part of the case for an abiding Repub advantage in the Electoral College because, as you know, small states get more electoral votes per population than do big states.