Capitol View for November 8

Good morning. Never a dull moment, Minnesota.

In his first speech since Tuesday’s election, President Joe Biden urged Americans to “bring down the temperature.” At the White House yesterday, Biden promised a peaceful transfer of power as he hands off the White House to President-elect Donald Trump. During his remarks, Biden also tried to quell any last concerns about the integrity of the election system in the country. “I also hope we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system,” Biden said. “It is honest, it is fair and it is transparent and it can be trusted, win or lose.” Biden also applauded Vice President Kamala Harris for her “inspiring” campaign. Many Democrats are pointing the finger following their party’s stinging defeat on Tuesday, expressing frustration that Biden’s decision not to bow out of the presidential race until this summer sealed Kamala Harris’ fate.

The final tally on the 2024 election isn’t in and won’t be for maybe a week or more. But President-elect Donald Trump is on course to do something no Republican has in 20 years : win the popular vote in addition to the Electoral College vote. With some states still counting ballots, Trump stands at about 72 million votes to just more than 68 million for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. In Trump’s first run in 2016, he won the states needed to assemble an Electoral College victory but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by about 3 million votes.

Elections are good data points, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s comfortable win that got her a fourth term is an interesting one. Her victory margin was tighter than her prior races (56-40 this year, 60-36 in 2018, 65-31 in 2012 and 58-38 in 2006). But also consider this for a Democratic incumbent who prizes herself on making an annual trek to all 87 counties: She lost far more than she won. Klobuchar had a winning margin over Republican Royce White, whom she significantly outspent, in just 21 of the 87 counties. That’s down from the 43 she took six years ago, the 85 she won the time before that and the 81 in 2006. Klobuchar’s saving grace is that she romped in the most-populous counties. Ramsey was her best county with about 74 percent and Hennepin was just behind at 72 percent. Consider this: Klobuchar’s vote margin in Hennepin alone was 344,744 votes over White — more than two-thirds of her overall winning margin of about 500,000 votes. This whole exercise says two things: 1) It demonstrates the continual regional factionalization of an electorate given Klobuchar’s generally moderate image and durable popularity; 2) Republicans haven’t figured out how to win the most densely populated counties and until they do they’ll struggle in statewide races. For comparison, White’s best counties were Clearwater and Morrison, where he took about 68 percent of the vote. They netted him fewer than 10,000 votes over Klobuchar.

Within two days of being president-elect, Donald Trump named his first appointee for his upcoming term. Campaign manager Susie Wiles will serve as Trump’s White House Chief of Staff and will be the first woman to serve in the position. A longtime veteran of Florida politics, Wiles has worked for the Trump political operation on and off since 2016. In 2021, she was named CEO of Trump’s Save America PAC and became a senior member of campaign leadership in Trump’s second bid for the presidency.

Royce White didn’t waste any time in announcing he’ll run again for U.S. Senate in 2026 for a seat currently held by Democrat Tina Smith. Read more on why in his post on the social media site X. He got almost 1.3 million votes on a shoestring budget and despite his coarse commentary. There is no doubt that multiple Republicans will size up the seat because they see Smith as more beatable than Klobuchar. Don’t rule out a sitting member of Congress trying to trade up given the six-year term and added stature.

Fun with data, part two. According to the unofficial tallies, the House will be split 67-67 pending a recount in two races that currently are separated by 13 and 28 votes respectively. But how did the parties do overall in the state House battle?

DFL House candidates won a combined 1,542,003 votes.

GOP House candidates won a combined 1,527,634 votes.

Third-party candidates won a combined 9,659 votes.

Write-in candidates won a combined 7,886 votes.

Fun with data, part three. According to unofficial tallies, many voters showed up primarily or exclusively to vote for president. How do we know? Just look at the falloff the further down the ballot you go.

The votes for the presidential race combined to add up to 3,254,718.

The votes for U.S. Senate combined to add up to 3,183,183.

The votes for U.S. House (eight districts) combined to add up to 3,140,353.

The votes for Minnesota House (201 districts) combined to add up to 3,087,182.

What’s on Minnesota’s ballot in 2026? Pretty much everything. There is a U.S. Senate seat. The governor’s office is up again and we don’t know what Tim Walz will do. Offices for attorney general, secretary of state and auditor are up again, too, with a couple of those decided by razor-thin margins in 2022. The entire Legislature is on the ballot again, with both parties able to make a plausible case that they’ll be in charge come 2027, especially given the way that midterms can expose voter frustrations with the party in power in Washington (this time Republicans). Of course, Democrats defied history in the 2022 midterm.

About half of the Minnesota school districts that asked voters for money on Election Day got it. Elizabeth Shockman reports voters across the state were willing to renew existing levies for building maintenance and upgrades, as well as technology. But it was a different story when they were asked to pay more for day-to-day operating costs. 30 districts asked voters to approve levies for daily costs, but only about 40 percent of those requests were OK’d by voters. That’s one of the lowest approval rates since 1980. More than 300 Minnesota school districts sought to fill open school board seats this election. In places where incumbents were on the ballot, voters elected to keep them at a rate of nearly 87 percent.

Immigration experts and advocates in Minnesota are both preparing for and wondering what changes may happen to the immigration system under the next Trump administration. Sarah Thamer spoke to a few of them yesterday . Many say they are concerned about the future of DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows young immigrants who grew up in the U.S. to seek temporary protection from deportation and have the ability to work. During Trump’s first administration, the president-elect declared DACA illegal and ended the program, but the Supreme Court blocked the administration’s action. Also under Trump’s first presidency, he signed an executive order that banned travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries, a ban that was later expanded to include other countries like Venezuela and North Korea, although there were some exceptions. As part of his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump also promised to start mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Legal agencies are preparing to receive more calls and help immigrants navigate an uncertain future.