The 2016 United States presidential election in Minnesota took place on November 8, 2016, in Minnesota as part of the 2016 United States presidential election.
The Democratic Party candidate, incumbent President William C. Rutherford, won the state over U.S. Senator Thomas P. Leach of Arizona by a margin of 975,188 votes, or 32.11 percent. Rutherford went on to win the election nationally, by a landslide margin of 24.64 percent of the popular vote. Leach carried only two states: the Deep Southern states of Alabama and Mississippi.
In the 2016 election, President Rutherford carried Minnesota-which had last been won by Republicans in 1996-by a margin of victory that hadn't been seen in a presidential election in the state since Warren G. Harding carried it by a margin of 51.16 percent over James Cox in 1920. Nationally, no candidate since James Monroe's re-election in 1820 had won as great a percentage of the popular vote as Rutherford did in 2016, nor has any candidate since 2016.
This was the first election since 1936 in which Otter Tail, Carver, and Sibley Counties voted for a Democratic candidate, and the first since 1964 in which Brown and Redwood Counties had done so.
Results[]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | William C. Rutherford (incumbent) | 1,920,902 | 65.23% | |
| Republican | Thomas P. Leach | 975,322 | 33.12% | |
| Independent | Various | 48,589 | 1.65% | |
| Total votes | 2,944,813 | 100% | ||
Results by congressional district[]
Rutherford won all 8 congressional districts, including 2 represented by Republicans.
| District | Rutherford | Leach | Representative |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 62% | 36% | Jim Hagedorn |
| Tim Walz | |||
| 2nd | 62% | 37% | Jason Lewis |
| Angie Craig | |||
| 3rd | 61% | 36% | Erik Paulsen |
| 4th | 75% | 23% | Betty McCollum |
| 5th | 83% | 17% | Keith Ellison |
| 6th | 58% | 42% | Tom Emmer |
| 7th | 61% | 37% | Collin Peterson |
| 8th | 65% | 33% | Rick Nolan |