Minnesota
87 counties, 4,106 precincts, a House tied 67–67 — and every seat in the legislature on one November ballot, with both marquee offices open.
What was on the August 11 primary ballot?
State deltas
Every state has hair. Here is Minnesota's.
The rules that make this state different from the last one, what each breaks if you assume the national default, and how the engine resolves it.
Every county, city, school, and judicial office in Minnesota is nonpartisan by statute — sheriffs and county attorneys run without party, unlike all five states before this one. A model that expects a party on a county contest invents data.
Partisanship is a property of the office class, not the candidate. Nonpartisan contests carry no party field at all — and judges carry the ballot's printed 'incumbent' flag instead.
The default six elected offices can be merged or made appointive county by county: 43 counties run a combined auditor-treasurer, thirty-plus have appointed recorders or treasurers, and Hennepin, Ramsey, and St. Louis operate under their own special laws. Only sheriff and county attorney can never be appointed.
Each county record carries its own office roster with the statutory basis attached. The slate is read, never assumed — and the 2019 reverse-referendum law means it keeps changing.
Townships do not blanket Minnesota: 58 unorganized territories — 13.3% of the land, mostly up north — are administered directly by counties, and can vote entirely by mail. Meanwhile any town, of any size, may also opt into mail-only balloting. The floor of the ladder is missing in places and paperless in others.
The township rung is present by evidence, not template; unorganized territory resolves straight to the county, and mail-ballot status is a precinct attribute.
Most of Minnesota's 1,776 towns elect supervisors at the March town election — second Tuesday, held with the annual town meeting where the assembled voters, not the board, vote the taxes. Some towns have opted into November. One office class, three possible calendars.
Each town carries its own election-calendar attribute, and the town meeting is modeled as a legislative body whose membership is the electorate.
No-excuse absentee opens 46 days out — among the longest windows in the country — and election-day registration means no deadline ever blocks a voter. 'Election day' is a six-week process with a same-day registration tail.
Turnout and coverage are modeled as a window, not a point. Registration counts are snapshots that keep moving through election night.
Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington, Minnetonka, and St. Louis Park elect municipal offices by ranked choice in odd years. A single-choice tabulation model cannot represent those contests at all — and no state, county, or federal race uses RCV.
RCV contests carry round-by-round tabulation records; the contest type, not the state, decides the counting model.
Minnesota's Democrats are the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party — ballots, filings, and results all say DFL, and national-normalized party strings mislabel every contest. The minor-party roster moves too: Legal Marijuana Now lost major status in May 2024.
Party identities are state-scoped strings with valid-from dates, mapped to national families only at the display layer.
Federal to township
What Minnesota actually elects.
The seats run bottom-heavy here too — and this year the top of the ladder is as busy as the floor: every legislative seat in the state is on the same November ballot.
Congressional map
Where those seats are.
The 8 congressional districts in force for the 2026 cycle — not necessarily the map this delegation was elected under. Minnesota has not redrawn since the 119th Congress was seated.
| District | Population | Median income |
|---|---|---|
| MN-01 | 713,000 | $73,883 |
| MN-02 | 733,289 | $101,390 |
| MN-03 | 699,786 | $101,791 |
| MN-04 | 699,739 | $85,172 |
| MN-05 | 702,050 | $83,394 |
| MN-06 | 747,036 | $100,756 |
| MN-07 | 715,239 | $70,873 |
| MN-08 | 727,776 | $73,546 |
County ledger
Eighty-seven counties behind one good state feed.
The Secretary of State's night feed covers the state — certification still arrives county by county between the third and eighth day. Thirteen of 87 shown.
| County | Feed vehicle | Precincts | Contests | Status | Last read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hennepin | JSON feed | 842 | 49 | Verified | 3 hr |
| Ramsey | JSON feed | 400 | 41 | Verified | 3 hr |
| Dakota | Vendor app | 292 | 36 | Verified | 5 hr |
| Anoka | Vendor app | 232 | 33 | Verified | 5 hr |
| Washington | County HTML | 210 | 30 | Verified | 7 hr |
| St. Louis | PDF / SOVC | 185 | 29 | Sweeping | 9 hr |
| Olmsted | County HTML | 118 | 26 | Verified | 7 hr |
| Stearns | PDF / SOVC | 108 | 25 | Verified | 9 hr |
| Scott | Vendor app | 96 | 24 | Verified | 5 hr |
| Wright | PDF / SOVC | 92 | 23 | Verified | 9 hr |
| Cook | County HTML | 14 | 11 | Verified | 7 hr |
| Lake of the Woods | Scan only | 8 | 9 | Journal entry | 12 hr |
| Traverse | Scan only | 7 | 9 | Journal entry | 12 hr |