There’s no point in making predictions unless you revisit them after the fact to determine how accurate they were. So here’s a review of my election picks from earlier this week.
Minnesota Congressional Races
CD#1
Walz by 8
Nailed it. Walz won by 8.53% to be precise.
CD#2
Kline by 12
Kline won by 17% so I was off a bit.
CD#3
Paulsen by 9
I blew this one as Paulsen wins by over 24%. Guess I bought the hype about the 3rd being more of a purple district.
CD#4
McCollum by 22
She won by 28% so I underestimated just how blue the 4th is.
CD#5
Ellison by 26 (sigh)
If the 4th district is deep blue, what is the 5th? Ellison wins by 47% (yes, that’s the margin of victory not how much he got.)
CD#6
Emmer by 8
Another district that wasn’t as close as I though. Emmer wins by 18%.
CD#7
This is where things could get interesting. I still expect Colin Peterson to prevail in the end, but it will be much closer than in previous years. Peterson by 4
Peterson won by over 8% a more comfortable margin than I anticipated.
CD#8
This is where things WILL get interesting. A decade ago it would have been laughable to suggest that the Eighth District would be become the most hotly contested congressional seat in Minnesota, but since 2010 that has been the case. It will be a close contest once again and I see it flipping again this time to challenger Stewart Mills. He’ll take it by 1
The only race where I missed the winner as Nolan held off Mills by 1.4%. It was close, but went the wrong way for the GOP.
Minnesota Senate
I’m going out on a limb here and predicting that the DFL will maintain control.
Nailed this one.
Minnesota House
Without drilling down into any of the races, I’m going to predict that Republicans will just barely regain control of the House.
Got this right as well although Republicans won more seats that I thought they would.
US Senate
Mike McFadden has run a good campaign and Al Franken has done nothing in his six years in the Senate to deserve reelection. Alas, voters in Minnesota seem unable to perceive this and I see Franken winning in a race that will be closer than the polls indicate, but not as close as it should be. Franken by 6
While I was certain that Franken would win I didn’t think he would by double digits. He beat McFadden by just over 10%.
Minnesota Governor
I’ve long been a big fan of Jeff Johnson and have enthusiastically supported his run for governor. However, I think his campaign has lacked focus and he missed opportunities to target Dayton on issues such as MNsure that could have tipped the balance in his favor. Like the Senate race this will be closer than most polls have indicated, but Dayton will emerge victorious (sigh redux). Dayton by 5
Sadly, this was another race that I predictably correctly and came quite close on. Dayton received just a hair over 50% of the vote and beat Johnson by 5.5%.
From a local perspective, I expect that every candidate and cause I support will lose as usual (sigh hat trick). On the broader stage, I do expect the GOP to win enough seats to control the Senate and increase their majority in the House. For a Republican in a deep blue district it will be a day to vote locally and celebrate nationally.
I didn’t see the Republican wave being quite as big as it was nationally. Meanwhile, locally it was a tsunami of blue as usual.
My state rep candidate lost by 35.5%.
The yes vote for one school district spending measure won by 43% and the other by 25%.
Another election when Minnesotan Republicans for the most part had to celebrate vicariously through the success of candidates in other states. A position we’ve become all too accustomed to.
