The rural vote in 2020 (Part I): Minnesota

Two national media stories this week appear to reach differing conclusions about rural Minnesota's role in the upcoming election.  

Here's a September 9 story from NPR out of Aitkin, Minnesota, population 2,165, which suggests that rural voters who traditionally supported Democratic Party candidates are shifting to Trump.  The headline is "Trump's Rural Support Puts Democratic Bulwark Minnesota In Play," and here's the lede from that story by Mark Zdechlik:

Democrats could find a growing problem for their party with a voter named Gretchen, sitting outside a brew pub in the rural northern Minnesota town of Aitkin.

Gretchen asked that her last name not be used, for fear it would hurt her family's business:  

I'm kind of disillusioned, and I'm really confused.  I'm a registered Democrat, but yet, I see all of this stuff that I kind of disagree with.

She doesn't like President Trump and voted for Hillary Clinton four years ago. But she's no longer happy with Democrats. She opposes the face mask mandate Minnesota's Democratic governor ordered, in addition to blaming Democrats for recent rioting that has accompanied some protests in Minneapolis-St. Paul and other urban areas.

And Astead Herndon reported this week for the New York Times out of Duluth, population 86,265.  Here is the headline:  "Minnesota Seemed Ripe for a Trump Breakout. It Has Not Arrived."  And the subhead speaks volumes:  "Minnesota was a near miss for Donald Trump in 2016. But new polling shows him well behind where he finished four years ago in a state he views as a prime pickup opportunity."  Here's the lede:

For a campaign event featuring Donald Trump Jr., the brash-talking, liberal-dunking namesake of the president, it was all rather mundane.

There was no large rally with thronging crowds, but a few hundred seats at a community center, each socially distanced. The signature Trump campaign playlist, usually blared at a volume that makes conversation impossible, was replaced by a selection of library-level soft rock.

“I like the crowds a little bit more packed and a little tighter, but we have to play by different rules, and that’s OK,” he told supporters.

It was not supposed to be this way. If any state is positioned to go from blue to red in 2020, to embrace the fullness of Trumpology and provide the president some much-needed Electoral College insurance, it is Minnesota.

And I'll close with this quote from the NPR story, actually from University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs:  

Democrats talk about fighting for rural Minnesota, but their policies and their voters have in effect written off rural Minnesota.