This week we had Super Tuesday, the biggest primary election day of the campaign which in 2024 included Minnesota.

President Biden and former President Trump won easily in the presidential race. The numbers show that our region is trending toward Republican candidates.

I predict Trump and local Republican legislative candidates will win in the region. The DFL has an uphill climb. The candidate who has a good chance of winning locally is Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

It will help to have Klobuchar on the ticket. When statewide voters are factored in she should easily cruise to a fourth term. Republicans might as well let her run unopposed and concentrate their efforts on the presidential race, U.S. House races and close legislative contests.

Minnesota hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential race since 1972 when the state voted for Nixon. It was the only state to vote for Walter Mondale in the Reagan landslide of 1984.

Had Mondale not been a native Minnesotan, it’s very likely that Reagan would have carried the state. He came very close even with Mondale’s home state advantage.

I predict Minnesota will go to Biden in 2024, that it will be the 13th time in a row that the state votes for a Democratic presidential candidate.

In 2020 Biden carried only 13 of Minnesota’s 87 counties. He won because he carried the counties with the largest populations.

He won in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, along with Washington and Dakota in the metro area. He won the Duluth area counties of St. Louis, Carlton, Lake and Cook. He won Rochester’s Olmsted County.

He also won four counties in outstate Minnesota that have four year colleges. They include Winona Cunty (Winona State), Blue Earth and Nicollet counties (Mankato State), and Clay County (Moorhead State).

The voting in Lyon County was closer than it was in surrounding rural counties. Lyon County is Biden’s best chance of winning somewhere in the southwest corner of the state.

The 2020 results reflect the impact of educational demographics. Trump is very popular among people with high school educations or less. He does less well with people who have degrees and even worse among people with graduate degrees.

You don’t find many people with advanced degrees in deeply rural counties. It’s mainly doctors, lawyers, school administrators and a handful of others.

Those with less education tend to have lower incomes. One would think that they’d vote for Biden, whose policies involve funding programs designed to help them.

I heard a news commentator on Tuesday night say that it seems the more Biden tries to do along those lines, the more less educated people resent him.

My theory is that many of them are too proud to accept help. They’re like the draft horse Boxer in the George Orwell novel Animal Farm.

Boxer repeatedly said “I will work harder” and “Commander Napoleon is always right”. He dreamed of retiring to a comfortable pasture. Instead the pigs who ran the farm had him carted off to the glue factory when he could no longer work.

It’s a matter of opinion as to whether workers in the 21st century get mistreated in much the same way. There are at least some similarities, however, because of how much of the working class has a strong commitment to work ethic.

There’s a real polarization in terms of how urban and rural people see political issues. That’s not likely to change in Election 2024.

In Election 2020 Biden was helped by urban counties in Minnesota and many other larger states. That could easily happen again in 2024. The swing locations in middle sized cities and metropolitan areas will prove critical.

I wish I could say we’ll be fine no matter who wins. I can’t say that because I’d be concerned if my candidate doesn’t get elected. We’d have four years of chaos.

It’s an important decision for America. Everyone should want to be part of it.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent