Understanding the Minneapolis and Saint Paul Elections: First Draft

What did we learn from the Minneapolis and St. Paul elections, specifically with Jacob Frey and Melvin Carter, respectively, elected as the new mayors of the two cities?  The simple answer is that what happened in these two cities has significance well beyond their borders.

Turn first to Minneapolis.  It is less clear that this is an election endorsing Frey or voting for him than it was one rejecting the incumbent Betsy Hodges.  After the first round of voting Hodges received 18.1% of the first-choice votes, meaning more than 80% voted against her.  The voters clearly did not like her style, handling of issues such as police use of force or crime or her oversight of the construction on Nicollet Mall.  But that did not mean that any one candidate emerged as the alternative to her.  Council member Jacob Frey did not even receive 25% of the vote.  In fact, the top five candidates split up 96% of the vote, with each receive more than 15% of the vote.  

What emerged was a city polarized and divided.  It is not clear that Frey enjoys widespread support of most of the constituencies in the city, and he clear has a long way to go in terms of his ability to reach out to the business community.  In addition, given his lack of administrative experience and really, his general lack of experience in government (only his tenure as a city council member), and the fact that the mayor’s position in Minneapolis is relatively weak, it will be a challenge for him to govern.  This is especially the case when it looks also as if the city council will have several new comers and it too is divided.  Frey won less because of his positions (in many ways his positions were not so different from Hodges) and campaign and more because Hodges was unpopular, the opposition was divided, and he was the strongest of those who were not the mayor.

But perhaps one of the less appreciated or overlooked events that took place in the Minneapolis elections was that City Council President Barb Johnson lost.  This is an enormous blow and loss of institutional knowledge and skill in Minneapolis.  She held together a factional city council since 2006, and her loss means both a new mayor and council president taking over at the same time.  The challenge will be to figure out how to govern in Minneapolis.

St. Paul’s election was a surprise in the sense that almost everyone thought it would be a close election between Melvin Carter and Pat Harris. In the end Carter won for several reasons.  He had a better campaign, name recognition, and more DFL endorsements that were meaningful.  But also, Pat Harris’s campaign was not as good as many assumed.  But the real game-changer was an ad by the Police union (Building a Better St. Paul) that accused Melvin Carter’s stolen guns as being involved in crimes.  This was perceived as a Donald Trumpish type of race-baiting that backfired.  It energized many to vote and probably also turned away some from Pat Harris who was stuck.  If he fully disavowed the group and ad then he repudiated his base, if he did not act aggressively enough he would be seen as endorsing this attack.  In the end, he waffled, and it hurt him.

Electing Frey and Carter as mayors of the two largest cities in the state is significant for several reasons. First, they are young, and it signals a passing of the DFL leadership mantle to a new generation.  This started already in Minneapolis four years ago.  In St. Paul, with Carter elected and Coleman out, the latter may well be the last White Irish Catholic mayor in the city, recognizing the changing politics and demographics in that city.  Second, both are liberal.  There liberalism will push the two cities further to the left on a range of issues.  This will have an impact not just in the two cities, but both regionally and state-wide.  Regionally, if both cities move to establish living wages for employment in their towns it could have an impact in terms of how other cities in the region have to respond.  Additionally, if the two cities move further to the left, it potentially causes a political schism between the DFL there and across the rest of the state.  It also sets in motion a potential stronger urban-rural or DFL-Republican conflict in the state.

A Note on my Predictions

            So how well did I predict the mayoral elections in the two cities?  In the end I got some things right and some wrong.  There were no surveys or polls to use to help make election predictions, so I was shooting in the dark, so to speak.  In a September 21, 2017 blog I made the following predictions:

Predicted:

Frey 26%
Hodges 24%
Dehn 20%
Hoch 15%
Levy-Pounds 10%

Final first-choice votes

Frey 24.97%

Hoch 19.27%

Hodges 18.08%

Dehn 17.34%

Levy-Pounds 15.06%

The final order of votes after RCV was applied, had Frey winning, followed by Dehn, Hoch, Hodges, and then Levy-Pounds. I clearly overestimated support for Hodges and underestimated that for Hoch and Levy-Pounds.  I let you decide how good my predictions were.

And the Winners of the Minneapolis and St. Paul Mayoral Elections Are...

I don’t know.  But I think it is still Betsy Hodges and Pat Harris, but it is still too close to call.
For two major elections in Minnesota it is odd that there is very little data upon which to make decisions.  Perhaps that is good–not letting pollsters drive an election.  But for those of us wishing to make sense out of elections, the absence of any polling or survey data on Minneapolis and St. Paul makes predictions and analysis difficult. Not only do we not have polling data on who is likely to vote, which candidates are the first choice of voters, and which candidates are the second and subsequent choices of voters, but will also do not have some other basic data about the electorate. 
By that, even though both cities are overwhelming Democratic, we do not know what the real percentages of the electorate are in terms of Republican, Democrat, and Independent.  Even among Democrats, how they break down into how liberal, or whether they are pro-business, environment, or civil rights orientated, or how race factors into voting preference, we do not know.  Largely, unless the campaigns have data they are not sharing, there is little in terms of good research available to make meaningful predictions.  Even more–as someone who worked on or managed more than 50 campaigns in the past–having good data is critical to strategy and get-out-the-vote plans.  Without such data campaigns are simply guessing to what will happen or what to do.  In an era of big data and political micro targeting, on the surface it looks as if the mayoral campaigns in the two cities are largely operating in the dark.
In St. Paul it is a two-person race between Harris and Carter.  For weeks I thought there would be no first round winner and that RCV would be decisive.  At one point I thought Carter wins the first round but Harris takes it subsequently.  The Building Better St. Paul attack on Carter explicitly injected race into the campaign and it perhaps looked to be game changer to give the election to Carter.  That may still happen, but more than a political week of eternity has passed and I am not sure that the racial attack will be as big a game changer as thought.   Race will still be a factor in the election, but in different ways.  Will Dai Thao’s voters come out and only cast a first choice for him?  Will the old White Irish Catholic vote come out strong for the safe white guy Harris?  How motivated is the party base to make Carter their version of Obama?  With a possible 20-25% turnout, the logic of small numbers kicks in and slight shifts in turnout will decide the outcome.
In Minneapolis Hodges is unpopular and has run an inept campaign but she probably remains the favorite to win.  She does so because the DFL machine, if there is one still, favors her, and because still no candidate has emerged as the clear anti-Hodges alternative.  As I said several weeks  ago, Hodges can poll in the low to mid 20 percent in the first round of voting and still win if she is the preferred second choice of most voters. That assumes that among other voters they do not know the other candidates will and prefer Hodges as the devil  they know as opposed to the devil they do not know.  But there is also a chance that Hodges is so disliked that “anyone but her” is the option of most voters, again in an electorate that may be in the 30% range.
We also do not know what the voter ID bell curve looks like in Minneapolis.  Among those who will vote, how liberal and what type of liberals will they be?  For those who are not DFL, pro-business,  or more centrist, if they turn out to vote, Tom Hoch is the likely choice.  If the voters are  looking for the Hodges alternative with name recognition, then Frey is the likely choice and winner.  Minneapolis’s liberalism and voting patterns are much more difficult to predict than St. Paul this election, in part because there are three to maybe four candidates that have a real chance of winning,  and with a total of five who could possibly top 10% in the first round voting.  Perhaps for the first time since RCV was adopted in Minneapolis, it may actually make a real difference in who becomes mayor.
Given the above factors and the lack of real data, predicting who will win on Tuesday is complicated.

The Lessons of the Minneapolis Elections--RCV and Generational Change

This blog originally appeared in an earlier form as a Minnpost Community Voice on November 7, 2013

    The mayoral elections in Minneapolis and St Paul could not have been any different.  One was loud and unscripted the other peaceful and predictable.  Both spoke to the character of the two cities and what they mean for their futures.  Minneapolis’ election was a generation changer preparing the city for the future while in St Paul it was an endorsement of the status quo holding the city in the past.  But in both cases, ranked choice voting (RCV) successfully did its job.   
    Critics were wrong when it came to RCV.   With RCV and 35 mayoral candidates in Minneapolis, skeptics contended that voters would not be smart enough or overwhelmed in their ability to process the information needed to make intelligent choices.  There were worries of spoiled ballots, disenfranchisement of the poor and people of color, or widespread dissatisfaction with RCV.  That did not happen.  Why? 
    Minneapolis learned from experience.  Four years when Minneapolis first used RCV I was asked by the City Elections Department to evaluate implementation of the new voting method.  My report’s biggest concern was evidence of some voter confusion but the recommendation was better voter education.  The City responded with a great voter education program that this election significantly reduced voter error and spoiled ballots.  Moreover, in St Paul, part of why the election ran without a hitch is that they too learned from the 2009 Minneapolis experiences.  For critics of government who say it cannot learn, Minneapolis and St Paul did and the results paid off.
    Voters in Minneapolis learned how to adjust to 35 candidates on the ballot.  The top six candidates received nearly 90% of the total votes cast.  Voters demonstrated a capacity to gather information and select candidates whom they preferred and were deemed viable.  Moreover, worries that voters would select only vanity candidates and not vote for someone who was one of the finalists also seemed largely negligible.  In short, the theoretical and hypothetical worries that the election system would break down did not occur.  As a bonus, the Minneapolis experience confirmed a trend from around the country–RCV discourages attacks on opponents, more civil campaigns, and the potential for more cooperation during and perhaps after elections.
    This is not to say that there were no flaws in Minneapolis’s elections.  For one, ballot access is too easy in that city and it needs to change.  Currently Andrew Jackson ($20) gets you on the ballot.  The Charter Commission is talking of raising that to $500.  That is the wrong direction to go.  The US Supreme Court has ruled that excessive ballot fees unconstitutionally discriminate against the poor.  A better option is a minimum number of signatures to appear on the ballot.  Most races call for either paying of a fee or filing of signatures.  A $500 fee really does not demonstrate a showing of support.  A rich candidate could afford that fee easily or raise it from friends.  Signatures are a better sign of commitment.  A requirement of 500 signatures to appear on the ballot would have  eliminated (based on election night returns) 25 of the candidates from appearing on the ballot.  Thus,  a filing fee of $500 or 500 signatures seems a better way to assure some minimal showing of support to appear on the ballot.
    Additionally, the City needs a better protocol for eliminating and counting candidates who have no mathematical chance of winning.  Changing ballot access rules may solve that, but the two days of counting after Tuesday did some damage to RCV.  Tuesday night it was obvious to me when the final results were in that mathematically the bottom 29 or 30 candidates had no chance of winning.  Had the City simply transferred their votes on Wednesday morning then the race results would have been final by lunch time that day.  Finally, high percentage of “exhausted votes” does lend an appearance that some votes were not counted.  They were counted, at least the first choices were, and perhaps second and third too, but the fact that they were not counted in the final vote lends to impressions that must be addressed in the future.  Again, new ballot access rules may address this or perhaps allowing for more ranking, as they did in St Paul.  For now, RCV haters will latch on to exhausted ballots as a major flaw with the voting system.  Overall, we need to distinguish between ballot access rules, ballot casting rules, and ballot counting rules we evaluating elections.
    Beyond RCV, the elections in the two cities spoke hugely of their futures and characters.  Minneapolis’s election was about a generational change.  It was the older DFL being replaced by a new generation of Democrats.  The old labor-led, white establishment DFL lined up behind Mark Andrew while the new demographics of a racially and politically changing city behind Hodges. Andrew was like Frank Skeffington–Edwin O’Connor’s fictional old line Democrat mayor in The Last Hurrah who loses a reelection bid because he does not realize times have changed and he has not.  Andrew is a solid and noble DFLer, but he is old school at a time when Minneapolis is changing.  With Hodges as mayor and seven new council members Minneapolis is set for the shift to the future with a new agenda for a new constituency.  If Obama in 2008 represented the transition  from Baby Boomer to Gen X and Millennial politics at the national level, this is what happened on Tuesday in Minneapolis.
    Not so in St Paul.  Chris Coleman is perhaps the last mayor of the old St Paul DFL.  He is part of the old Irish Catholic DFL constituency that his father represented.  He represents the past of an insular city DFL party that still controls the city with many council members still playing old school politics. .  It is the coalition of traditional labor unions and party insiders. It is the politics of downtown ballpark stadiums and public subsidies for economic development projects.  Coleman does not really have an agenda for the future.  He is like Robert Redford’s character in The Candidate–elected but asking the question “What do we do now?”  Coleman is the mayor of Baby Boomers seeking to hang on one more time.  Minneapolis's DFL party is more robust and  diverse, St. Paul's is neither.  The St Paul DFL is too monolithic and power, and thereby sloppy in what it believes and who it lets in and what it considers to be Democrat politics.  There needs to be real competition in St Paul politics, either inside or outside the DFL, but it is not there.
    In some ways, the people of both cities got what they wanted, or at least elected mayors suited to their personalities.  Minneapolis is the hip, cool, and forward city looking to the future.  St Paul is more stodgy, less prone to change, and more stuck in tradition than its sister across the Mississippi.  The mayoral elections represent a tale of two cities and a contrast in the way they handled changing generational politics.