1976 Presidential Election in Minnesota

Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Senator Walter Mondale, overwhelmingly won the state of Minnesota and its ten electoral votes in 1976. The Democratic ticket scored a nearly thirteen-point victory (54.9 percent to 42.0 percent) over Republican President Gerald Ford and his running mate, Senator Robert Dole. The election was the third of four consecutive presidential races with a Minnesotan on the national ticket of a major party, and it marked the beginning of the longest active streak of any state voting Democratic in presidential elections.

After President Richard Nixon’s resignation amid the Watergate Scandal in 1974, Democrats were bullish on their chances of winning back the White House in 1976. US Senator Walter Mondale had spent most of 1974 exploring a run for president but withdrew on November 21. Once Mondale departed, attention turned to Minnesota’s other US senator, Hubert Humphrey, who had run to varying degrees in the previous four presidential elections—including as his party’s nominee in 1968.

Humphrey never formally declared a run. Instead, he said, he would allow himself to be a consensus candidate at the party’s convention if it deadlocked. This wasn’t an impossible outcome, given the number of Democrats running in 1976 and new rules on how convention delegates would be selected. Party leaders and Democratic voters didn’t fall behind any one candidate quickly.

Humphrey’s chances, however, didn’t last long. Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter steadily gained delegates in early Democratic primaries, and Humphrey fully dropped out in late April 1976. Republicans, meanwhile, had a contested primary between President Gerald Ford and former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Minnesota’s Republican Party (which had been the only in the country to change its name to the Independent-Republicans, to try to pivot away from the Watergate aftermath) held its convention late in the primary schedule. But the gathering in St. Paul drew more attention in 1976, with both Reagan and First Lady Betty Ford appealing personally to delegates at the convention in St. Paul. Ultimately, Ford won all but one of Minnesota’s delegates.

With Nixon having narrowly won Minnesota in 1972, the race for president in Minnesota was still close in the summer of 1976. A confidential poll from June—before the conventions—found Carter leading Ford by just one point (41-40).

Once Carter and Ford secured their nominations, attention turned to each nominee’s running mate for vice president. At the Democratic National Convention in July, Humphrey reemerged as a contender, as did Minnesota’s popular governor, Wendell Anderson. But Carter eventually selected Mondale, with Humphrey formally nominating his senate colleague.

Two days later, 2,000 supporters greeted Mondale at Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport ahead of his riding in the Minneapolis Aquatennial parade. He then spent Sunday, July 18, fishing in northern Minnesota before hitting the campaign trail.

With a Minnesotan on a major party ticket, the idea quickly dissipated that the state’s race would be competitive. Carter made just one trip to Minnesota as nominee, when he spoke to 70,000 people at Farmfest on September 15. The Ford campaign then scrambled and dispatched vice presidential nominee Senator Robert Dole two days later. He spoke to a crowd about a fifth of the size of Carter’s.

1976 was the third of four consecutive presidential races with a Minnesotan (either Humphrey or Mondale) on the national ticket of a major party. Former Senator Eugene McCarthy also ran for president in 1976, as an independent. Although his candidacy seemed poised to be a spoiler for Democrats, McCarthy ended up a nonfactor. He garnered fewer than two percent of the vote in his home state. Gus Hall, a native Iron Ranger who ran several times as the Communist Party nominee, received less than a tenth of a percent.

In addition to the Carter–Mondale ticket’s overwhelming victory in Minnesota in 1976, Humphrey also easily won reelection. The DFL party gained one seat in the Minnesota House and nine in the Senate, giving them majorities of 104-30 and 49-18, respectively.

“Let’s face it, we got clobbered,” said Independent-Republican Party chair Chuck Slocum, in a speech to his executive committee a few weeks after the election. The party, however, enjoyed electoral success just two years later in the aftermath of Governor Wendell Anderson appointing himself to the US Senate when Mondale became vice president.

The 1976 election marked the beginning of the longest active streak of any state voting Democratic in presidential elections. Only the District of Columbia has a longer active streak of voting Democratic with its three electoral votes.