Laboratories of Democracy, Part VII: Minnesota
The Star of the Left
Minnesota is the northernmost state in the mainland United States, thanks to the slight protrusion above the 49th parallel caused by lack of information when the US-British border treaties were originally drawn up, and it has a fairly unique political culture. Like the remainder of the Upper Midwest, Minnesota was historically dominated by Germanic ethnic groups - chiefly Germans, Norwegians and Swedes - and these groups brought with them a high level of civic trust and responsibility, as well as a strong left-wing political ethos (being disproportionately from the lower rungs of society). The state was one of the early strongholds of the Labor movement, and leaders like Floyd Olson, Hubert Humphrey and Paul Wellstone carried its legacy on through decades of dominance in the state's political life.
The Labor Party remains the biggest in the state by quite a margin, although the introduction of a runoff in gubernatorial elections means it doesn't quite have the insurmountable stranglehold on the governor's mansion it once enjoyed. Once being perpetually within inches of an overall popular vote majority, today Labor usually gathers between 35 and 40 percent of the vote in legislative elections and the first round of the gubernatorials. Its main opponent, as usual in the Midwest, is the Republican Party, which is weaker here than in many other places, largely owing to a split in the party in the late 1970s, with the more doctrinaire conservatives bolting out to form the Conservative Party and taking about a third of the party's voteshare with them. In between the two main blocs is the Farmers' Party, the Minnesota edition of the agrarian special-interest parties that exist across the Great Plains - its main support area is in the more fertile southern part of the state, and while generally not aligned with either side of politics, it tends to side with Labor on most issues in exchange for supporting continued farm subsidies. Finally, rounding out the political system is the United Left, a broad coalition of leftist Labor dissenters and doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists, who are more successful than in most other states but still generally don't crack five percent in a statewide election.
In the old days, this was Minnesota's party system. Recently, however, a new force has appeared from the sidelines - the Liberty Party, which like its sister parties in other states is a right-wing populist protest movement. In Minnesota the party toes a fairly standard line, mixing economic freedom with evangelical Christian social teaching - this message resounds well with the dissidents of a state where big-state liberalism has been the received wisdom for decades, and particularly so in southern rural areas that feel shafted by Labor's focus on the Twin Cities and the north. Like other Liberty parties, the Minnesota branch has fared better in federal elections than in state-level ones, but the 2014 legislative election saw them break through in a big way, capturing some 13 percent of the vote and beating the Farmers into third place. It even managed to win a district outright, becoming the first new party to do so in a very long time (since the Conservatives narrowly won Stearns County in the 1982 right-wing landslide). Even so, it's still reliant on the at-large seats, as most of its support is spread out over the smaller rural electoral districts.
The Minnesota Legislature is a unicameral body, consisting of 150 members. Of these, 130 are elected by proportional representation in each of the state's counties, with merged districts where counties are too small to be entitled to a seat in their own right - this is similar to Washington's electoral system, but Minnesota differs from it in having 20 at-large leveling seats to offset the distortion created by the population imbalance.
The Star of the Left
Minnesota is the northernmost state in the mainland United States, thanks to the slight protrusion above the 49th parallel caused by lack of information when the US-British border treaties were originally drawn up, and it has a fairly unique political culture. Like the remainder of the Upper Midwest, Minnesota was historically dominated by Germanic ethnic groups - chiefly Germans, Norwegians and Swedes - and these groups brought with them a high level of civic trust and responsibility, as well as a strong left-wing political ethos (being disproportionately from the lower rungs of society). The state was one of the early strongholds of the Labor movement, and leaders like Floyd Olson, Hubert Humphrey and Paul Wellstone carried its legacy on through decades of dominance in the state's political life.
The Labor Party remains the biggest in the state by quite a margin, although the introduction of a runoff in gubernatorial elections means it doesn't quite have the insurmountable stranglehold on the governor's mansion it once enjoyed. Once being perpetually within inches of an overall popular vote majority, today Labor usually gathers between 35 and 40 percent of the vote in legislative elections and the first round of the gubernatorials. Its main opponent, as usual in the Midwest, is the Republican Party, which is weaker here than in many other places, largely owing to a split in the party in the late 1970s, with the more doctrinaire conservatives bolting out to form the Conservative Party and taking about a third of the party's voteshare with them. In between the two main blocs is the Farmers' Party, the Minnesota edition of the agrarian special-interest parties that exist across the Great Plains - its main support area is in the more fertile southern part of the state, and while generally not aligned with either side of politics, it tends to side with Labor on most issues in exchange for supporting continued farm subsidies. Finally, rounding out the political system is the United Left, a broad coalition of leftist Labor dissenters and doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists, who are more successful than in most other states but still generally don't crack five percent in a statewide election.
In the old days, this was Minnesota's party system. Recently, however, a new force has appeared from the sidelines - the Liberty Party, which like its sister parties in other states is a right-wing populist protest movement. In Minnesota the party toes a fairly standard line, mixing economic freedom with evangelical Christian social teaching - this message resounds well with the dissidents of a state where big-state liberalism has been the received wisdom for decades, and particularly so in southern rural areas that feel shafted by Labor's focus on the Twin Cities and the north. Like other Liberty parties, the Minnesota branch has fared better in federal elections than in state-level ones, but the 2014 legislative election saw them break through in a big way, capturing some 13 percent of the vote and beating the Farmers into third place. It even managed to win a district outright, becoming the first new party to do so in a very long time (since the Conservatives narrowly won Stearns County in the 1982 right-wing landslide). Even so, it's still reliant on the at-large seats, as most of its support is spread out over the smaller rural electoral districts.
The Minnesota Legislature is a unicameral body, consisting of 150 members. Of these, 130 are elected by proportional representation in each of the state's counties, with merged districts where counties are too small to be entitled to a seat in their own right - this is similar to Washington's electoral system, but Minnesota differs from it in having 20 at-large leveling seats to offset the distortion created by the population imbalance.
