DFL says it 'can't keep up' with Trump campaign efforts in Minnesota
A fundraising effort launched by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota on Monday appears to betray some fears that the state could flip red in next year's presidential elections.
A series of tweets by the Minnesota DFL saw it admit that the "Trump campaign is staffing up in Minnesota in ways we’ve never seen before, and frankly we just can’t keep up."
"Trump and the GOP already have over two dozen staffers on the ground, and are promising more, and they have already trained over 600 volunteers in Minnesota!" it added.
Hillary Clinton carried Minnesota in 2016 but the margin was just 1.5 percent, the closest it's been to flipping Republican since Walter Mondale won the state over Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Minnesota is the state with the longest run of Democratic wins, and President Donald Trump has made flipping the state a major part of his campaign strategy in 2020, resulting in several visits to Minnesota since his election, including this Thursday at Target Center in Minneapolis.
As the DFL points out, Minnesota has been turning increasingly red based on recent elections, and even though Amy Klobuchar and Gov. Tim Walz easily won statewide votes in the 2018 mid-terms, the Republicans flipped 2 U.S. House seats in the 1st and 8th District, even though they lost the more suburban 2nd and 3rd Districts.
With Republican turnout expected to be significantly higher given next year is a presidential election year, the DFL appears concerned that Minnesota could plump for the GOP.
This in turn could provide a potentially crucial win in the Electoral College that could negate potential Democratic gains in the likes of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump's approval rating has been dropping.
His approval rating in Minnesota, per the Morning Consult, is actually worse than the typical swing states at minus 11, but the tightness of the result in 2016 is giving Republican strategists hope of a possible swing in 2020, with rural areas of the state increasingly turning red.
The DFL Party has launched a "Money Blizzard" fundraising campaign to that end, coming in a week where activist engagement against the president is expected to be high ahead of his arrival in the state.
