MOORHEAD – Rob Kupec steered his Kia Sorrento through the streets of his neighborhood Wednesday afternoon, just hours after Donald Trump had been declared the next president.
Kupec, a longtime television meteorologist and first-term DFL state senator, was performing a thankless task, first in yards near Minnesota State University Moorhead and next in the far-flung rural areas of Clay County. He was helping Democratic candidates remove yard signs after the election.
In every presidential election since 1992, as Clay County went, so went the nation. For eight elections in a row, Clay County voters picked accurately. It was the longest streak in Minnesota, one of the longest in the country.
Until Tuesday, when 16,121 Clay County voters chose Kamala Harris and 15,965 chose Donald Trump. Harris’ Clay County margin of victory was less than half a percentage point. For the first time since Clay County voters chose Michael Dukakis in 1988, their sentiment did not reflect the Electoral College result.
As he plucked a Harris-Walz sign from under a tree and tossed it into his trunk, Kupec looked for a silver lining: His party had retained the Minnesota Senate, while the Minnesota House was still up in the air. And Harris had won Clay County, barely.
But the big story was the big story. Trump had won a resounding victory across the country. Arizona was called for Trump Saturday night, giving him 312 electoral votes, more than Biden’s 306 in 2020. And after losing the national popular vote in 2020 by 7 million votes, Trump appeared on track to win the popular vote this time by 5 million votes. In Minnesota, Trump increased by four the number of counties he won, to 78, and in Clay County, Trump did about 2 percentage points better than four years ago.
“I grew up a Red Sox fan, and being a Red Sox fan when I was little prepares you for always being let down,” Kupec said, braking as a flock of wild turkeys crossed the road. “Always a feeling of unease. No lead ever feels safe.”
This county’s role as a longtime political bellwether is a result of being a mostly rural area in a heavily rural, Republican part of the state — but also having the urban Democratic sway of the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area and a handful of colleges as well. Modern American politics is defined by the urban-rural divide, but few counties experience that in the just-down-the-road way that Clay County does.