Former President Donald Trump, who spoke at a Minnesota Republican Party fundraising dinner in May, has said he has “a really good shot” at winning the state. (Glen Stubbe/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Minnesota Republicans are trying to pull off in this election what’s evaded the party for more than five decades: A presidential win. They are banking on former President Donald Trump, who has lost the state twice.

Trump visited the state in May, and has since announced plans to open eight field offices. His campaign just hired two senior staff members as it begins ramping up its ground operation.

While Republicans haven’t won a statewide race since 2006, they see several factors trending in their favor, especially now amid Democratic apathy toward President Joe Biden following his lackluster performance during last month’s presidential debate.

“People are looking at demographics and the election results in the last few years in Minnesota, and they’re seeing that we shouldn’t presume that this is Democrat country,” State Republican Chairman David Hann said in a recent interview. “It isn’t.”

Republicans have picked up long-held blue congressional seats in the First, Seventh and Eighth districts since Trump was elected.

Democrats control the Legislature and every statewide office. But they hold both legislative chambers by narrow margins, and statewide races for attorney general and state auditor were close in 2022.

“[Minnesota] does have the longest streak of only voting Democratic, but it’s not Massachusetts or California,” said J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor with the nonpartisan election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which downgraded Minnesota from likely Democrat to leans Democrat after the debate, noting Trump’s strong performance in 2016.

Trump lost Minnesota to Hillary Clinton by just over a percentage point in 2016 and to Biden by about 7 points in 2020.

“It’s a blue state, but it’s not an overwhelmingly blue state,” Coleman said.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report also changed its assessment on Minnesota from likely Democrat to lean Democrat this week.

Democrats have focused on building their ground operation. They see abortion and defending democracy as potent issues that will resonate with Minnesota voters and hurt Trump.

“We’re not taking any vote or voter for granted this election,” said Justin Buoen, Biden’s Minnesota campaign adviser.

While the Trump campaign is still in the early phases of building its field operation, Biden has been staffing up since March and has 19 field offices up and running in all of Minnesota’s congressional districts, including in St. Cloud, St. Paul and Mankato, the campaign said.

Biden has also visited the state several times and enlisted Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith as surrogates who have stood by him post-debate.

“For all that talk and bluster of how much Donald Trump thinks he’s going to win Minnesota, or wants to win Minnesota, he’s not treating Minnesota like a real pickup opportunity,” DFL Chair Ken Martin said in an interview.

Martin thinks the key to the election will beDemocrats running up their numbers in Minneapolis and St. Paul while swaying swing voters in the suburbs.

But Republicans believe Democratic infighting and third-party candidates will boost Trump.

Nearly 46,000 Minnesotans voted “uncommitted” during the presidential primary, one of the highest percentages in the country, following a campaign protesting Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.

Martin thinks those voters will ultimately break for Biden. “Uncommitted voters are Democratic voters and they will come home because the last thing they want is Donald Trump in office,” Martin said.

But if Democrats and uncommitted voters stay home and Minnesota’s history of backing third-party candidates holds true, Republicans see that helping them.

“I’d give Trump no worse than even odds to beat Biden here due to Biden’s frailty and voter anger over border security, crime, inflation, wokeness run amok and more,” former GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty — the last Republican to win statewide — said in an email.

In early June, former Minnesota House GOP leader and gubernatorial candidate Marty Seifert was skeptical of a Trump victory. He now thinks it’s possible, especially if areas like Minnetrista, Chaska, Shakopee and Hastings vote for Trump.

“After the debate and talking to different people on both sides of the aisle, I would say Minnesota is too close to call right now,” Seifert said. “I was pessimistic before the debate, but people that are even ardent Democrats or people that dislike Trump are moving toward [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.].”

The Trump campaign has provided few details about its strategy to win Minnesota and it’s unclear where Trump’s field offices will go. Trump’s state chair, Rep. Tom Emmer, has said more details will come once the former president’s ground staff is built up.

An internal memo from late June shared with the Star Tribune said the Trump campaign has hired staff to manage Minnesota and cited internal polling showing the state is in play.

“President Trump is dominating in every traditional battleground state, and longtime blue states such as Minnesota, Virginia, and New Jersey are now in play,” Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

The campaign’s hiring of attorney Tayler Rahm, who suspended his bid for the competitive Second District seat to work as a senior adviser for Trump, illustrates the campaign’s desire to court the state’s conservative grassroots voters. This block has been influential in recent Republican endorsing conventions.

Hann said Trump’s path to victory is in greater Minnesota, where Trump prevailed in 2016 and 2020, and he thinks Trump can make inroads in the metro if he can win more independent voters in Hennepin and Ramsey counties.

Recent polling indicates the race is close, which former DFL Chair Brian Melendez says suggests Minnesota is in play.

“Minnesota has voted for the Democratic nominee in every presidential election since 1972, and that long track record says that the Trump campaign will have an uphill climb,” Melendez said in an email. “But Trump came closer to winning Minnesota in 2020 than any Republican nominee since 2004, and President Biden’s disappointing performance at their debate two weeks ago probably isn’t lowering Trump’s numbers.”

Biden held a narrow lead over Trump in the Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Minnesota poll in early June. Seven percent of respondents were undecided and 6% backed Kennedy.

And they were statistically tied in another June poll conducted by Emerson College in a race with third-party candidates.

“I think that the chances of him winning Minnesota have increased,” Minnesota Republican strategist Gregg Peppin said post-debate. “But until we have more polling to be able to say definitively, I think he would still be the underdog, but certainly much less of an underdog than he was a month or two months ago.”