Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, capping the Midwestern Democrat’s short but swift ascent from a relative unknown to a leading driver of the party’s attacks on Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda.
As a resident of a neighboring state, I’m excited to get to vote for someone from somewhere so close in a national election. If my annecdata happens to apply to more than just me that might help in Iowa, Wisconsin and the Dakotas (although culturally the dakotas are more comparable to their neighbors to the west, while Minnesota is culturally closer to Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin)
Granted I only married into a Minnesotan family and my experience with the Dakotas is fairly limited, but I would have said that they’re a pretty broad spectrum from east to west, especially in South Dakota. Rapid City is definitely pretty similar to Montana and Wyoming, but Mitchell, Sioux Falls, and Fargo are all far more similar to Minnesota
Then again, I’m thinking “culturally” not “politically,” so if you’re thinking about how they vote, you’re probably right that they’re likely more similar to MT than MN.
Think of it this way: Minnesota has a population of 5.7M, and almost 3M of that is in the metro area of Minneapolis. It’s not quite up to the level of Chicago or New York, where that one blue metro area completely dominates state politics, but it’s close.
What I’m getting at is while Minnesota does have areas that are more like the Dakotas, those aren’t the places where most of the people live.
I see your point, although it doesn’t match my anecdotal experience. People from the Twin Cities might vote differently than people in the small rural towns, but many of the everyday attitudes and cultural associations are pretty similar statewide, regardless of whether they are rural or urban. And in my experience, people from the Cities have a lot more in common culturally with the eastern Dakotas, Iowa, and Wisconsin than they do with Chicago and rural Illinois or with Montana and Wyoming.
As a resident of a neighboring state, I’m excited to get to vote for someone from somewhere so close in a national election. If my annecdata happens to apply to more than just me that might help in Iowa, Wisconsin and the Dakotas (although culturally the dakotas are more comparable to their neighbors to the west, while Minnesota is culturally closer to Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin)
Granted I only married into a Minnesotan family and my experience with the Dakotas is fairly limited, but I would have said that they’re a pretty broad spectrum from east to west, especially in South Dakota. Rapid City is definitely pretty similar to Montana and Wyoming, but Mitchell, Sioux Falls, and Fargo are all far more similar to Minnesota
Then again, I’m thinking “culturally” not “politically,” so if you’re thinking about how they vote, you’re probably right that they’re likely more similar to MT than MN.
Think of it this way: Minnesota has a population of 5.7M, and almost 3M of that is in the metro area of Minneapolis. It’s not quite up to the level of Chicago or New York, where that one blue metro area completely dominates state politics, but it’s close.
What I’m getting at is while Minnesota does have areas that are more like the Dakotas, those aren’t the places where most of the people live.
I see your point, although it doesn’t match my anecdotal experience. People from the Twin Cities might vote differently than people in the small rural towns, but many of the everyday attitudes and cultural associations are pretty similar statewide, regardless of whether they are rural or urban. And in my experience, people from the Cities have a lot more in common culturally with the eastern Dakotas, Iowa, and Wisconsin than they do with Chicago and rural Illinois or with Montana and Wyoming.